It can be pleasing to inhabit a fiction where all the pieces are smoothly bolted together, working in lockstep. But teaching people to favour the consistency of imaginary worlds may also teach them to vilify disagreement and the entire practice of interpretation.

I can sometimes feel this pressure when running a tabletop game in a big setting like 40k or Star Wars. Can’t imagine how magnified that is when you’re working on something thousands of people with play, let alone in a fan base with such obnoxious reactionaries in the mix

100%. If you have $5-10 bucks to throw to the Democrats you could instead toss it to someone who actually needs it, like the UNRWA, or a local gofundme

I doubt the average player looks up whether the devs came out to warn players their game runs like shit before buying it, I think they just buy it. Similar to how people probably don’t check to see if a movie director has mentioned how bad the sound mixing and lighting is in a movie before going to watch it. Might be a crazy take but imo the onus isn’t on the person buying the game to make sure the game is finished, let alone looking up articles on the game to make sure the devs didn’t admit that it runs like ass and isn’t finished. Though with how often it happens and how often there’s people that excuse it maybe that’s where we’re at now, you reap what you sow and whatnot lol

lol and lmao

There’s a lot of commotion about how so many Jazz tracks that pop up in Spotify playlists come from clearly made up bands with one or two songs, millions of views, and no internet presence anywhere outside of Spotify.

Wow if there’s one thing I really want to pay extra for is to have a computer randomly pick my music based off what I like. That’s way better than what Spotify has already been doing: randomly picking music based off what I like! True innovation. Will the service also come with some sort of slider or bar that I can use to change how loud or quiet a song is? Maybe some other buttons that can let me skip or go back to a song, even pause and play it to my liking?

I for one am thankful we were born and raised in a society with no racial biases that could seep in to my work. Now, if you excuse me, I have to go back to writing up the only black person on my team for underperforming at the video game company with a history of racism and sexism B)

All the best workplaces that don’t have a racism problem are the ones where lightly suggesting diversity training is met with hostility, denial, and sacking of the person suggesting it. Such actions really highlight how seriously said company takes concerns of bigotry at the workplace and proves they’re giving it their all to make it as inclusive as possible.

I’m siding with the employee who was treated like a racist

Proving how incredibly not racist I am by taking incredible, personal offense at the suggestion of checking possible biases I may have as manager at a company with a history of racial biases, because I care about combating racism just that much

For anyone interested in this news, don’t forget to check out your local library. If you’re in the US there’s a good chance that your library card will also give you access to online audiobooks for free!

Significantly easier college admissions (despite using a standardized process), extremely generous business loans, proportional ethnic representation in government, vast infrastructure projects to bridge the salary gap, and celebrations of different cultures across the country. Not very capitalist of them

Sorry OP but basically none of this has anything to do with not being capitalist. I don’t even doubt that China is doing better in those departments than America, but that has more to do with how utterly shit America is at most things outside of building bombs than how communist China is. They should get some kudos for executing a couple billionaires, though, gotta at least give 'em that.

That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure if the game industry had different standards to other fields for that kinda stuff. Sacking a bunch of QA agents does not sound promising for the games they’re working on…

Departments ranging from art to production were impacted, but the majority of those laid off worked in quality assurance testing. The sources said at least 25 developers were part of the downsizing. Full-time staff do not appear to have been part of the cuts.

Sources tell Kotaku that no severance is being offered for those currently laid off, and that impacted developers as well as remaining employees are being pressured to keep the news quiet. Their contracts won’t be officially terminated until the end of October and they’ll be expected to work through the rest of the month.

If I’m understanding right it sounds like only part-time contractors are getting cut. Do part-time employees usually get offered severance packages or is this (kinda ghoulish) business as usual? I wonder how much work those people will get done for the rest of the month

This would be the strangest thing to lie about of all things. I dunno what clout is gained by saying it took 2 days to set up a router lol

Even if the remake was worse in every way, why would it matter when you can still buy and play the originals without any issue? The KOTOR games are some of my favorite video games so I can understand not liking a remaking that (hypothetically) changes some things, but I don’t know why it’d be a positive to not get a new version of it that might have gotten more people interested in the originals.

Yesssss, hard agree with this. I’ve been playing a lot of Euro Truck Simulator and I keep finding myself wishing it was 1:1 like MS Flight Sim. A woman can dream…

Me too, man. Me too…

I’m sure that drives a good chunk of it, but it’s more likely that there are a lot of people that have had their fill of Bethesda games that all basically play the same, just in different settings, and those people tend to be in nerdier spots like this. Feels a little dorky to just blame it all on fun-hating nerds haha, what a coincidence that all the people that disagree with you are just mad losers!

Edit: Going back to this comment after Starfield came out and yeah, it’s about what I expected. Skyrim in space lol. Can totally understand why people are underwhelmed or annoyed.

While hurtful and not cool to tell somebody. Im sure a million a people think similar things about a co-worker everyday.

Thinking it and saying it are two separate things. One is just the day to day frustrations of working with other human beings, the other is contributing to a toxic work environment that just so happens to target a woman in a boy’s club of a company within a boy’s club of an industry.

I kindly ask you to read things fully. Even disregarding how dismissive you are for victims of a terrible workplace like this, she specifically mentions how this toxicity messed with her visa status. “Just leave bro” is almost never a worthwhile sentiment tbh

Is this really news?

A popular tech YouTube company is outed as an abusive work environment that does nothing about sexual harassment some employees face. There’s news reported about far more insignificant shit, I think we can consider this newsworthy.

With how bad it is to send an unfinished product to a reviewer, the reviewer could at the very least use the right equipment to fairly review it. If it’s such a terrible idea it surely doesn’t need the additional help of rushed incompetence to highlight any flaws in the product.

This is veering really close to the “creatives have been gatekeeping art and AI will ‘democratize’ it” bullshit

Ugh, that BS makes me want to blow up my own head with mind powers. Anyone can learn how to make art! It is not ‘democratizing’ art to make a computer do it and then take credit for the keywords you fed it! Puke worthy stuff, I appreciate you speaking out against that crap far better than I ever could. There’s enough of that BS on Reddit, can’t we just it leave it there?

Wow, they took down Overwatch 1? That’s really messed up…

My partner and I just finished the game a few weeks ago and were surprised at how good and memorable it is. There were like 5 times in that game where we were like “Wait, we’re not near the end?” and it was such a treat every time

Such an amazing game, probably one of my top 5 favorites. Thank you for reminding me I’m due for a replay!

Yeah, that’s how he found all the Na’vi actors for Avatar!

He also mentions that the sub seems to have been attempting to resurface when it imploded, suggesting that they were aware the hull was starting to fail.

Shit, in all this time I hadn’t considered the middle of the road option between “dying immediately without knowing” and “slowly choking to death over several days”: dying but knowing that’s a big possibility right up until you’re crushed in the blink of an eye…

That’s fair, plus the eccentric nature of “a few mega rich people tried to use a giant coffin to see a famous shipwreck and disappeared” is probably easier on the eyes than “hundreds of desperate people with no other choice drown in their attempts for a better life elsewhere”

Do you read the news or do you get your news from social media? No judgment, I only ask because I’ve seen articles about the boat sinking since it happened, I’m surprised to hear someone missed it for a second. This Titan story definitely got more attention by far which feels criminal. A handful of thrill seeking billionaires vs hundreds of poor and desperate people…

I don’t think the commenter meant that Apple was literally committing an actual crime backed by a law lol

Yes, more pigeon appreciation in cities is a must!

I used to think “virtue signalling” was just some made up crap but it seriously feels like the most apt description for how right wingers use “woke”, “cancel culture” in general, etc. Just empty, meaningless buzzwords solely there to signal your political leanings to whoever is listening.

America has been an empire. It is an empire. That fact does not change just because the far right want to destroy this country and turn it into a fascist theocracy. That is entirely separate from how much “good” or “bad” the country can theoretically do, the two are entirely unrelated. You are trying to determine if a piranha is a fish by seeing if it can play free form jazz. There is no connection between something being an empire and something having the potential to be better down the road.

This country was built off of a genocide of Native Americans and then literally built off the backs of enslaved Africans treated worse than animals in lifelong captivity. For hundreds of years. Any discomfort you get from recognizing the US is an empire is a good starting point to grappling with this truth: America is an empire, it did and STILL does terrible things to maintain that status, and it’s not any more special than any other empire with a similarly awful history just because of some notion of American exceptionalism. Recognizing this stuff is honestly step 1, probably even step 0, to putting this country on the right path that you and me are hoping for!!

Right now you are doing the equivalent of when someone asks “What’s with all this talk about racism lately? If we all just stopped talking about it and worrying about it, racism will disappear!” A fact does not go away just because we are uncomfortable with confronting it. The US WAS built on white supremacist genocide. It CAN get better. These two statements are not incompatible. What IS incompatible is wishing for it to get better while whitewashing and softening what has made it awful so far while saying people who have harsh criticisms of this country are basically playing the useful idiot for fascists. You would not afford this ‘nuance’ and sympathy for any other nation with America’s history.

Only one side of the political spectrum recognizes this country as an unfortunately successful genocidal imperial state, and it is DEFINITELY not the right wing. In fact, they (right wingers) are the only ones trying to downplay and soften the state’s past atrocities while claiming people who point out said atrocities are ‘CRT-brainwashed liberal pinkos’ that are bringing this country down. I kindly, strongly urge you to seriously think about what I’ve said in this discussion, as I think it’s clear you are not some bad guy that wants to wish away America’s horrors, but I think you are accidentally becoming the same useful fool for the right wing that you worry about. Best case scenario, you still come off as whitewashing imperialist empires, just only when it’s from a country you favor.

Anyways, I don’t think I have anything else to add in this discussion and I’m not really interested in a lengthier discussion on whether the US is an empire or not, so I’m dipping out here. Hope you have a good day!

Thanks, perhaps I’ll give it some more time to finish cooking before I grab it lol. It sounds like it could scratch that itch that Left 4 Dead satisfied and Back 4 Blood couldn’t quite give me

I’ve seen a few commenters back on Reddit argue that it’s unfair to focus on Russian war crimes when Ukrainian soldiers have also committed war crimes. The whataboutism that some people use to defend these empires are truly mind boggling sometimes.

absolutely nothing comes even close

I would definitely not go that far, but I also find that comparing atrocities like this is unproductive at best and in really bad taste at worst when it comes to most online discussions. The conversation should be about the terrible genocidal acts Russia is currently committing, not become a pissing contest of which major empire is the worst out of all the major empires. Especially when such contests belittle the victims of those empires. Russia needs to put an end to this cruel war and take part in some reasonable peace talks already.

If you’ve played Vermintide 2, is Darktide as good as it? I’ve been wanting to dip into the 40k setting but I’ve heard the game got a meh reaction so far

Pablo Atchugarry, the artist tasked with recasting the statue, said he would “continue working on the construction of a symbol of peace that helps us get closer to that ideal.”

I wonder if he’ll keep the dove idea just without the whole ‘melting down a giant Nazi eagle’ part

I know cancel culture has long gone the way of being completely meaningless like “woke” and all the other renditions of the same phrase but this still feels incredibly silly to label as “cancel culture” lol

Propaganda is pretty effective no matter where you are in the world. It’s why many soldiers can do horrible shit to civilians in occupied territory and only later realize that they did something terrible. Here’s hoping we start hearing about Russian mutinies from more soldiers with similar realizations.

I dunno how many people would take issue with that, I think a fair number of people here would agree that America is an empire too for example

Holy shit was he seriously a mod of that subreddit? Good lord…