This was a fun one. Glad to see he’s finally getting some paper form Woodland Scenics (or at least free stuff) considering how much free advertising he’s given them over the years.

I’m torn. More For All Mankind is good, but the Soviet stuff we’ve seen already is a big bummer for me. (not to get into spoilers) Generally I like a paranoid thriller, but not if my faves are tied up in it!

I’ve heard people say you should start a new game. Which I did. But I think you’d be ok to jump in if you wanted. There’s a new neighborhood that it mostly takes place in. To start it, you have to complete some main game story mission about 3/4 of the way in, if I remember correctly.

If you’re really enjoying yourself I’d considering picking up Phantom Liberty as well. I played through the main game shortly after it came out on PS5. I was very ‘meh’ about it. But I recently picked up Phantom Liberty and started a whole new game, I probably doubled my play time, and still spent 4-5 hours after I’d finished all the story missions, just bumming around bc I was still so enamored of it. The story missions in Phantom Liberty are, in my opinion, better, bigger, and more emotional than the main game.

This is a shame. But I’m honestly surprised London Studio lasted this long. I loved Blood & Truth, but I’m surprised that they were sustained on Sing Star games for two decades. I mean, I know from a corp perspective they want to buy up people to stifle competition and then they don’t need the people because they never intended to utilize the output. But like, gosh, use what you’ve got. How bad could their fantasy London game have been for them to not only axe it but shut down the dev…

Alba is a really sweet game with a photography mechanic. It’s short and usually cheap and well worth the time you’ll spend with it if it sends like something you’d like.

“Bite my ossified, decrepit ass.”

It’s grim. Obviously twitter still holds sway over a lot of people. And spreading malinformed propaganda is bad.

But it really underlines that anyone with any conscience whatsoever needs to disengage from it. It’s not okay for governments to engage with it. And though I don’t suggest that capital cares has any sort of conscience, but engaging with it has been increasing in cost and decreasing in benefit. NPR recently left, for example, and saw nearly no impact whatsoever. So the cost of leaving is low.

Ideally people would deny it any money, advertising or otherwise, until it ceases functioning. I suspect Musk will continue to be a delusional asshole for years to come. But at least twitter will be dead and gone.

I’ve been waiting for years. Before RDR2 came out. But you’re absolutely right. Waiting for a couple months and I’m confident we’ll see a real sale. The whole reissue/not remaster game is not playing out the way they’d hoped. Remember the GTA Master collection or whatever the hell they call it?

I played it on my PS5 and really enjoyed it. (To be fair I didn’t pay for it) I’ve tried previous games and bounced off of them. But this one stuck. If it turns out to run okay. It may be worth it if you’re interested.

It really is a charming game. I think this article does a good job describing some of is delights. What really struck me though is that the main mechanics are things that you’d find in a leechy freemium mobile game. But they’re layered in complimentary loops that make the whole FAR more than the sum of it’s parts.

Agreed. But I wouldn’t say it’s overstated; it’s misleading. It’s largely a quote from the judge, who may be an idiot, but they said what they said. “Trump-appointed judge rules that Biden Administration went too Far in Preventing Medical Misinformation,” is wonky but more accurate.

Fair dues. But I want to point out that it’s more than the sum of it’s parts. There are tons of mechanics, and they’re all engaging in and of themselves. But the balance and the complementary gameplay loops make the game punch above it’s weight.

I really like Back for Blood. They still haven’t fixed getting mobbed by specials. And it’s not high art. And it’s not a forever game like Overwatch or Destiny. But it’s fun and a good game to hangout with people in, without having to worry about too much strategy.

I think there is one main difference between xmpp and activitypub. A chat protocol gets better the more users it has. So the users were the killer app. xmpp arguably wasn’t much worse off after Google left than before it got there.

Mastodon is a bit like this, in that lots of users are probably looking for the same type of content from the same users as they got on Twitter.

kbin/lemmy are a lot less like that. I just need enough people to surface interesting content and have a meaningful conversation. And I’ve already (mostly) got that now. If meta brought all of their users to link sharing it would probably get worse with clout-chasing, organic marketing, and low effort crap.

From a product side, I think most meta users who are looking for microblogging are happy enough with Twitter. So I think it will be tough to get a lot of initial buy-in.

In regards to the embrace, extend, extinguish concerns: I can’t, off the top of my head, think of any feature adds that would outweigh fediverse peoples distaste for ads or corporate social media. I mean, are flashy ai filters enough to split the user base of a reddit-alike or twitter clones? Is anyone clamoring for vr group-chats to improve their link-sharing threaded convos.

I’m not saying there’s nothing to worry about, but I think the feature-poor nature of these types of services (that really aren’t significantly different than old bbses) insulates at least those corners of the fediverse to some extent.

Plus, feature-creep is something people usually hate, or are uninterested in with big social media before this all started to pop off? Remember Foursquare check-ins, deals, credits, crypto, live audio…

I hear what you’re saying. And I don’t have the financials quick at hand. But I guess what I really mean is that they’d be fighting tooth and nail, gouging eyes… Essentially that neither of them are above the dirty tricks campaign and it benefits no one in the long term.

They are gobbling up developers. Many are lowly and don’t have many credits to their names. Sony may be a hardware company that doesn’t fully understand software or services, but if they lost two generations in a row, you can bet your ass they’d drop billions of dollars to acquire Activision, or Take-Two or EA

This is a really good point. I have a PlayStation, (disclaimer) so I’m relatively content with their success in the buying-studios-to-produce-console-exclusives game. But it’s objectively bad for the industry. Gamers don’t benefit because they can’t play where they want (or can afford), developers don’t benefit because they lose creative control and market share (with the trade off of some short term capital influx), and publisher’s don’t even really benefit because its a game of mutually assured destruction that all ends up on Steam discount list anyway.

Plus: if Sony does manage a definitive win in the console wars that will shut down billions of dollars of investment that Microsoft is currently putting into the industry. And not just on the console side. That’s bad for everyone. Microsoft has been leading the way in accessibility and interoperability between platforms (Game Pass on mobile/console/pc). And that’s to be applauded.

I read somewhere (forgive me for not having a link) that the games industry recently shrunk for the first time in a long time. I think it largely has to do with tiktok and other more instant gratification choices for free-time. But gaming entering into the hellscape of streaming fragmentation is not drawing outsiders to the hobby.

Bummer that it doesn’t work. I’m quite happy here on kbin. And I didn’t know that the software running them was completely different. So much to learn about the fediverse.