Character creator… marketplace.

Fuck entirely off.

“Prudence” was always a lie.

Conservatives make up their own past, and for some reason, we believe them. ‘We’ve always been the party of slow reasonable change… but now we need extreme action, and it’s the outgroup’s fault!’ Gun control versus Black Panthers, violence defending segregation, theocratic indoctrination over imaginary satanism, anti-gay bigotry, anti-Muslim bigotry, anti-trans bigotry-- same as it ever was. They’ve got one speed and this is it.

All that’s changed is, their bullshit is blatant beyond belief, and their figurehead is the dumbest motherfucker who’s ever taken over a country.

Why is zooming not integer-only?

It’s pixel art. It should go 1x, maybe 1.5x, and then 2x, 3x, 4x, etc.

You were going to get modern rail, but conservatives are bastards.

One of those funny coincidences that keeps happening.

Dull mewling.

The regulation needed is: fuck all that.

Games make you value arbitrary nonsense. That is what makes them games. Attaching a dollar price to that fiction is a category error. The entire business model is an exploitation of that confusion.

This abuse is making games objectively worse. Maximum revenue comes from addiction and frustration. Fun is an obstacle. At best, fun is bait on the hook. The actual goal, especially for “free” games, is to grind you down as thoroughly as possible to extract real money over and over and over and over. If you don’t think that’s you - neither did most people who wondered where all their money went.

Because he’s a felon?

Because he’s a fascist?

Because he was impeached twice?

Because he attempted a coup?

Because he pardoned everyone involved in the coup?

Because he’s opening concentration camps?

Because he accepts bribes?

Because he’s compromised by Putin?

It is a mystery!

Horse armor was above-board, compared to this shit. You got files you didn’t have. Modern “DLC” is already on your hard drive, appearing on other people’s characters, but you’re not allowed to touch that file until you pay ten actual dollars.

‘I was only endorsing what you’re condemning’ is a baffling sentiment.

A lot of what I think you’re talking about is based on player trading, is it not?

None.

… you know that cost is cumulative, yes? Games that somehow trick people into spending a thousand dollars a month don’t do it in one great lump.

Nazi parrots popular sentiment.

Good, fuck 'em.

I used to lurch into conservative subreddits routinely. Each one turned into an openly fascist circlejerk and banned all dissent.

The value for conservatives in social media comes almost entirely from being able to antagonize people who don’t want to interact with them.

Once you strip away the “making the libs cry” aspect of conservative social media, they lose all interest in talking to each other. That’s why Parler failed, that’s why Trump’s blog failed, that’s why these people won’t just leave these platforms they hate so much.

And that is the underlying principle behind their hysteria toward “cancel culture” and deplatforming. They aren’t upset at losing the right to speak (nor have they lost it). They’re upset that they’re being deprived of access to a captive audience of non-conservatives to upset.

It’s not advocacy for free speech, it’s advocacy against the freedom of association.

Which could have been the weirdest tangent on a Wikipedia page. Jim Henson, Muppets, Sesame Street, retired characters, Big Bird, oh was that an early version of Abelardo?, Challenger shuttle dis-- what. What? What the fuck?!

When the guy who played Mr. Hooper died, they worked that into the show. The cast, sincerely grieving, had to explain to a seven-foot-tall canary that he wasn’t coming back. That’s not really he same kind of intrusion from reality, as acknowledging the same giant fowl fucking exploded on national television.

The only possible comparison would be if some show had a gimmicky live episode that happened to be scheduled for 9 AM, on a Tuesday, in September of 2001.

Same. I think that episode was shown in-class, too, so I came alarmingly close to the XKCD.

Any product that can take one thousand dollars from someone, in exchange for what would typically earn a studio twenty dollars, is not differentiated by whether it has a cover charge.

The tolerable monetization model is: just sell games. They’re not services - they’re products. You buy them and own them.

It’s the Vimes doctrine: if they can do it for a good reason, they can do it for a bad reason.

Unfortunately, that’s not sufficient to keep that bullshit out of big-budget single-player games. Publishers can force it upon developers - and will. Once a few games get away with it, the cult of executives will figure they’re losing money if they don’t fuck you as hard as possible.

Some idiot told the robot ‘paste our logo in’ and didn’t understand it would affect the whole image.

Calling it AI generated is still a stretch, when… you can see the original image right there. The posted version is as accurate as a shitty photograph or an artist’s rendition. They did in fact have these bags of whatever.

You know why.

Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. Ban the entire business model.

Nobody thinks games should cost $1000. Yet that’s how much this abusive business model can extract from individual players. For hats. You don’t even get all the hats! When there’s not straight-up gambling, there’s still a constant trickle of bullshit, because some schmuck will think a static model with a particle effect is worth the price of several entire video games.

The total content of these games, even a decade in, is unremarkable. The least objectionable examples still want $200 to have all the characters, in a 1v1 fighter. Whoop de doo. Defenders can only insist Capcom used to gouge people even harder. The shit y’all put up with might be worse than annual sportsball releases.

The far end of that spectrum now needs an installment plan. How fucky does an industry have to get, before people stop going ‘but arcades?’ This shit is already half the revenue in gaming. It’s getting worse, and it’s spreading. It’s in full-price, flagship-franchise, single-player games. If we allow this to continue there will be nothing else.