YouTube Premium.

I pay for this, and two other family members pay for two other services. Theirs have each blocked the other 2 of us… So what was once 3 of us buying 3 family plans has become just me doing it. And the second YouTube blocks them, I’m canceling it.

Dreamhost.

More than a decade ago they had a big fuck up where they accidentally charged tons of users multiple times when their contracts weren’t when finished. So one day I woke up and they’d taken a few hundred dollars from my account. That put me in the negatives.

When I called them, they verified my identity, and let me complain a little. (I’m not much of a complainer. But their customer service person was great.) They paid me back the charged amount, and asked how much I’d had in overdraft fees, and paid me that too. And they let my hosting plan date reset at that date for the year-long renewal. So they basically have me like 9 months on top of it.

Mind you, I wasn’t using much at the time. Just a few blogs and a podcast. So it’s not like they’re not making free money off of me. But they handled it so damn well. Didn’t even ask to see a bank statement about my overdraft fees. Just “and how much was that? Got it.” I’m sure it was just a case of cost and smart business… But fuck yeah, reward smart business.

If Infinity Ward’s next game includes a DMZ mode and it’s good, it will probably determine what I do. I’ll probably need a new PC to play it. I’ve got a 1080 and I’m on Windows 10. I play ARC Raiders with no problem now. But if I have the money, and DMZ2 is fun, and it requires Windows, I’ll probably get a new PC with the next Windows. If it doesn’t, I’ll probably just switch my current PC over to some flavor of Linux, and maybe put that money to a down payment of a house. It’ll probably be about the same amount by that point.

I think saying that they “bribed the standards body” suggests the body was in on it. The actual allegation (I don’t know any facts, just these comments) seems to be that the body was subverted by other countries that were bribed by Microsoft. Being someone who doesn’t know the details there’s a worthwhile distinction there. Though that still opens questions about the board’s reaction, and I might read up on it all later.

Barry is a phenomenal show for film/TV nerds, which you wouldn’t expect without someone telling you that.

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Like was already said, I’m considering cancelling YouTube Premium too but our numbers won’t really matter. The reports of worsening Firefox compatibility almost some me in and I didn’t even notice.

I have a family plan with my brother and cousin on it. I know they’re cracking down on sharing with people who don’t live together, but if they cut them I’m done. I’ll figure it out. And I’m probably petty enough to comment about it on everyone’s videos that I follow. (Which also won’t really matter, but I’ll feel better voicing the discontent.)

This makes sense to me. A hybrid would be nice. Have a calendar or some art while it’s “off”. But then, that’s probably pretty expensive. (Not that I’ve looked, I’m just assuming.)

Honestly I think people would unironically that as an option.

Gaming is my big issue. But now that my quality gaming time with family has gone from Warzone to ARC Raiders, it’s a far less daunting concern. I’ll probably wait and see if DMZ 2 supports Linux, which sadly I doubt, and if that game will cost

I completely agree that huge teams aren’t needed. That said I think at least some of that is exactly because smaller studios full of expert talent were getting funded for several years, because those big studios weren’t making the games developers wanted to make. And those devs understood that “fun” wasn’t the same as “top of the line presentation”.

ARC Raiders’ Embark Studios has a lot of people from DICE. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Sandfall Interactive has a lot of people from Ubisoft. Even Dispatch’s Ad Hoc is a lot of Telltale people (at least some of them by way of Ubisoft.) They knew a lot about their process, but their big companies weren’t making the games they were interested in. So they got funding elsewhere (and famously Ad Hpc’s funding dried up mid-development.)

I’m curious about Wikipedia’s sourcing here. Granted there’s the Balatros and Stardew Valleys of the world, and Helldivers did well. But do smaller games really make up half? Year after year the big ones are usually COD, two big sports game, a Nintendo game, another big fps, a big action game, and a few others.

Again I agree with you when it comes to good games. But man, those big ones are huge sellers. I just wish we had clear insight into sales. But that’s been a thing for a long time now.

Investment money is not as plentiful as it was several years ago. I’ve heard it in several interviews with developers or devs themselves. (Game Maker’s Notebook, Mike and Rami are Still Here, and a few devs on YouTube come to mind.)

I may be wrong as I don’t really play the genre, but I think Marvel Rivals is kinda the king of the hero shooter genre right now.

But that said I generally do agree that “another live service game that doesn’t clear a very high bar” is the issue. The recent success of ARC Raiders despite social media telling me people “don’t want extraction shooters and to give it up” really drives home the point of “if it’s good enough… It’ll probably do well.”

(And I realize those two are third person games, so not “first person shooters”, but I’d still consider them competition for them.)

And with the economy the way it is, yeah, money matters a lot more. People are more likely to dedicate their time to one big game, and sometimes a couple of smaller ones. It makes things an “all or nothing” proposition. And most games don’t look like “all”.

AI in games (using code for entities to make non-player decisions) is about being good enough, cheap enough. It’s just like how games determine their physics. The existence of large scale “black box” AI like OpenAI does not reflect what’s good or cheap. It can’t play chess. You think it’s going to understand The Sims and make reasonable choices in that system?

They’ve already created well tuned system to give your Sims in obtaining their needs. It leads to you having to manage the chaos, and that’s what the fun is. To better hone that is to have the AI play the game for you. And even that, if efficiency of play is the goal, is better done by TASbot and machine learning.

That generic black box style of AI like popular LLMS is like creating a hammer. Now everyone is treating every problem like nails. AI decisions making in games is like washing windows; don’t use a hammer.

The problem is that “AI” is a poorly defined, very vague, and widely used term. Most people here have assumed you meant LLMs because everyone pitches those as ways to solve everything. “Oh, irer up an agent, give it instructions, and let it make requests that are context dependent”. Then, like everyone says here, that usually turns into people testing boundaries and breaking your game. So that makes it both “not good enough” and “not cheap enough”.

Now, look at AI with the term “machine learning” in mind and it’s different. Games like ARC Raiders use machine learning to teach NPCs movement behavior, and to train AI voices like Siri so they can’t add things without further paying people. They think that up-front investment is worthwhile. But those are both far cries from “uploading it to Claude or ChatGPT and see what happens”. Especially when you would have to teach that black box AI your system anyway, for it to use it. And you’re already doing that with current “good enough, cheap enough” bespoke methods, for much cheaper, and they’re good enough.

Yeah it’s become less believable as time has gone on, but it’s still a fun ride.

Yeah, at this point I’m so locked in, I’m willing to go along for whatever shenanigans they’re up to.

I love a great championship match on weekly TV.

I started the first one and really liked the little walking I did in the first hour and a half, but I just tapped out after that because of the ratio of cutscene to game. … I should play them.

I get it and was very skeptical at the time… But soon after I began to believe they’d stick around, and my annoyance at installing through multiple discs (and also putting discs in the tray to play a game) won out.

I bought and moved like 1 in late 2013 when it spiked just to play with it and see how it worked, out of curiosity about the tech. (And soon after, mined Dogecoin on Reddit when it started, and we all began tipping like crazy because it was fun and funny.) I made a few bucks off the BTC and kinda regretted not holding it longer. Then cut to a decade later… Sheesh. I may be more sour on the tech now, but damn I’m not so crazy as to not regret selling it.

I’ve often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don’t keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A “previously…” kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.

Obviously they just don’t think it’s worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.

You’re completely right of course, but I’ll say it bugs me too at times. I was always able to forgive it but as we got more advanced visually it bugged me more. Then finally in Oblivion it was too much for me. I still love and respect the game, but it actively bugs me there are portals around the world that are just waiting for me to decide I want to fight. I know it’s dumb, but it is what it is.