In support of the move in spirit, but: Any ideas to prevent a company from circumventing this via dummying up contractor firms? Eg, “We employ this software company started by our founder to write our code. Coincidentally, their pay is .1% of the pay at Microsoft”

My mouse escaped the window, so I changed the launch options:

gamescope --force-grab-cursor -w (monitorwidth) -h (monitorheight) %command%

I kinda wish gamescope had a good option to skip that w,h, but no one’s told me about one yet.

this just in sale of speedboat now illegal because they are drug

I’ve always been okay with keeping gaming libraries digital - but I think the larger console population might be okay with that too if we could disconnect digital games from account-based ownership - the kind where a company can go “Oh, whoops, we lost the license to this fart sound effect. We’re going to have to remove this game from your library.”

I can’t say I like how /Games often circles around negative attention rather than positive.

Activision spent billions on marketing so people will buy these stupid Ultra Editions. Even negative attention gets people thinking about and talking about the game.

Instead, post about the cool indie games out that you think deserve far more attention than this battle pass slop. Let Activision come check up on us and cry because for all their efforts no one even cares to hate on their game.

Theres an asymmetric game out as a demo, called Carnival Hunt. It has a really unique aesthetic, and isn’t all that fun yet, in part because of the formula being refined and players getting better at it. But I like the idea: Rather than TCM’s idea of unlocking doors towards an exit, the survivors, “bunnies”, are trying to climb the floors of a large building, with each method of ascending a floor requiring various tools and making noise. Some ways up are harder to set up but easier to repeat, others only work if the killer is ignoring them.

The only occasion I could buy that a “console makes the exclusives” is when the costs are so high that the investors decide a $60 price tag isn’t enough.

That can be alleviated with DLC, or live service bullshit; or it can become an incentive to buy a particular console.

Then, when someone is braindead and doesn’t want a big epic award winning adventure, they’ll use that same console to play Fortnite. Thus, God of War helps sell VBucks or whatever.

It’s a weird analysis, but even though we no longer see console exclusives and it’s seen as a pro consumer move, I also think it was just a way for managers to boost one quarter’s revenue, and it wasn’t really good for the console ecosystem as a whole, especially considering how it would fund future exclusive epics.

There’s definitely been some fallacious “appeals to popularity” from them. Like, someone will say that “I empathize with other human beings”, and they’ll snicker “Oh, buddy. You just outed yourself. The days are coming for people like you.” and the first person will just reply “WTF are you talking about? I don’t care if there are only 2 other people like me in the world, or if you’re threatening me, I’ll still hold to empathy.”

Those conversations worry them. Learning that they’re the minority, especially when the majority is not easily typecast as “illegal immigrants”, scares them.

The kicker being if BBB is a big, friendly inmate doing his best to return to society, but his presence still comes across as torture to Trump because he’s hispanic.

What exactly do you see as a punishing death? Erasing someone’s save file? The only other thing I can think of besides permanently taking consumables that won’t be restocked is sending you back a long distance to redo a bunch of fights again - and DS does literally that. DS2 even lowers your max HP as an additional Fuck You.

You’re not the first person to say dying is “not so bad” in those games and I still can only view those as the ritualistic statement of an insane person. Every other action game I play, I rarely die, and when I do it just has me retry the singular thing I was attempting in that past minute. Even other hard games, like Super Meat Boy or Ori and the Blind Forest, don’t force large area repetition, or take away items as punishment. The mastery of completing 18 tasks perfectly in succession is for speedrunners - it’s not something I or most players are interested in, and it’s solely a source of stress, not excitement.

Heck, Tunic had the money-loss system during development. The dev took it away before release (you just lose a paltry amount and can still get it back) and the game was still great.

I disagree with this. I think Dark Souls does tell you which are approachable or not. It’s just not as obvious as other games. Some games will have a sign for the player that says “this path is dangerous” but DS doesn’t. It has characters talk about venturing into the catacombs. It has characters point out the aquaduct is the path to the first (and at the time the only you know of) Bell of Awakening. It tucks the elevator into New Londo behind the bonfire, where stuff will be later but you won’t see yet. It also tells you a lot about locations in item descriptions.

That’s…false.

The very first NPC you find at Firelink Shrine tells you there are two bells - one above, and one far below. It strongly implies both are equal options. There are at least 3 ways out of Firelink Shrine; one happens to go below, just like your friend the NPC said, to New Londo.

For players still acclimating to the basics of the combat, New Londo is a terrible novice experience. It requires perfectly tight positioning on teensy platforms barely visible through the water, and relies on limited items to even make a single attempt through the ghost-ridden area. That is a ton of mechanics that would be fine to slowly introduce players to, but it’s like putting the “Allspice Turducken while in a tornado” level of Overcooked first.

Then you’re talking about the Catacombs? The area whose entrance has infinitely respawning skeletons? Give up, man.

Dark Souls’ failure isn’t talking through NPCs - dozens of games that give your character a radio do just that. It’s from literally lying to you with misleading tripe and having no interest in any form of teaching - be it Half-Life 2’s nonverbal teaching or any verbally direct form. I had to play games by other devs, imitating the better parts of their formula, to learn FromSoft is just uniquely TERRIBLE at it.

That is…ABSOLUTELY false.

People frequently point to the idea that if you collect an item like a Soul of Lost X, or a weapon, and then die, you get to keep the item. But the game also has consumable items used to make tons of options easier within the world. Things that enhance your weapon temporarily, give an extra health boost, or give you souls. Players that use these without making much use of them, or even misuse them due to nebulously archaic descriptions, will have nothing given back to them later on, making a venture even harder than the first few go’s.

Plus, you’re likely not to get as many level ups due to lost souls, meaning you’re going to get even more of a difficulty ramp than other players.

I’m sorry - it’s just juvenile the way people who obsess over this game will defend every issue with “it’s not for every person” - especially when indie devs that have TWEAKED the formula, and FIXED the issues, end up making for very fun games. No one is playing them and complaining “Man, I wish I’d accidentally spent an hour going the wrong way at the start!”

I’m not far in Silksong - have not actually been stopped by difficulty yet - but even the obstinately unguided exploration is getting to me. And I do worry about the reports of it being too hard by others.

I never actually beat the final boss of the first game. Gave it a few tries, decided something as hard as that being a two-phase where the second hits harder is bullshit, Just decided to YouTube the ending.

It’s funny that tastes diverge so much. I love artificial scarcity, as a way of rewarding my exploration. Spotting out a trove of batteries wouldn’t feel so rewarding if I already had 5 and they last an hour.

I ended up giving up at one of the clicker sequences.

The game lore says they’re blind and navigate by hearing. The game code does not.

Counterpoint: Dark Souls is hard, because it gives a lot of options from the get go, and no information on which ones will be approachable or not. NO other major Soulslike I’ve played does this in the way DS did.

It also relies very hard on death alone as a teaching tool even when it says nothing. Players don’t see “You died. This boss is too tough! Maybe you should go back and upgrade your weapons.” They just see “You Died.” and interpret “Should have dodged that 87th swing!”

Worse, it has BAD lessons through the lost souls system. It makes sense as a pressure tool to make you fear death, but it teaches new players the wrong thing: For players to immediately beeline for the spot of their death without considering exploration, build changes, etc.

This game was what pulled me into PC gaming, but when I’ve watched novices return to it even with all the time I spent listening to their commentaries on good teaching…players don’t learn the things they want well, and I can’t blame them on reflection. Even things like where to go are tough for reasons they shouldn’t be.

I’ve played many Soulslikes, and found pretty much all of them fun…EXCEPT for the ones by FromSoftware. All others branch out into a lot of exploration, they just don’t put 8 paths square at the beginning of the game and then slap you down for 5 of them.

If I looked up a getting started guide, I’d feel constrained by its arcane instructions. “Go this way, take the third door, but DON’T talk to that NPC yet…”

Fun games are open to the player exploring, without massively disproportionate punishment for it.

I think the limit for me was the articles about forced repatriation, where China had snatch squads sent into other countries to force people to return, even when they had broken no laws recognized by that country. Oh, and the Uyghur genocides, which multiple global newspapers have reported on.

I will accept “US Bad”. These days, any claim of a large empire being perfect should be treated with massive suspicion.

You can get quite a few options at Itch.io if you filter for games that have an HTML5 version, and click through - much faster than installing options from Steam Next Fest. Unity and other small game engines have been perfect for that.