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Continuing to work my way through the Duke Nukem 1+2 Remasters on Evercade. So much love went into these its ridiculous.
I think regardless of that deal, they were already on the debt-go-round for long enough it would’ve caught up to them eventually. I can’t imagine this was gonna be “one last job then we go clean.” The market would continue to demand more and faster growth until they hit the wall one way or the other.
Seriously. I realize people have Feelings about DRM and always-online stuff, but this is an article about a game that was never especially popular or active entering maintenance mode after a couple of years.
They aren’t shutting it down, they aren’t making it unplayable (though of course either of those things could happen at any time etc etc) - they just are no longer producing content for a game almost no one is playing anymore anyway.
I guess my reaction is partially because I never see articles like this for my other hobbies and while I don’t see articles like this about video games often, I do see comments around the internet about this fairly regularly.
I don’t hear people saying “playing board games helps me with strategizing” or “playing guitar has really improved my hand-eye coordination and playing in a band has helped my ability to cooperate with others.”
Maybe that’s because gamers tend to feel more defensive about the hobby as it has historically been disparaged. People are more likely to picture “CoD yelling person” when they hear you play video games than they are to picture “wonderwall at parties person” when they hear you play guitar.
But, on the other hand, D&D players and Marvel nerds seem to have largely moved on from “but it’s actually really cool and fun and not weird at all.” Maybe video game players should consider doing so as well.
I dunno, ‘game company commissions study to ask gamers to self-report about how gaming isn’t a waste of their time’?
I’m in my mid 30s and have played video games my whole life. I also participate in some gaming communities online and my real-life friends are about 50/50 with regards to gaming. And if asked, yeah, I would probably self report that video games have had a positive impact on my life.
But have they? I’m not qualified to say. I don’t have any actual data in front of me. I do know playing video games often makes me feel good, but I can say that about lots of unhealthy habits.
Was pumping 150 hours into Tears of the Kingdom better for me than the couple weeks of workouts I skipped? Is it good that I drank more beer during that time than I normally would have?
Would my life have been more or less improved if, instead of talking about video games online I had been practicing guitar and finding an open mic night to play at?
Would it have been better for my mental health and hand-eye coordination instead of playing Elden Ring to have gone to Home Depot, bought some wood, and built the shelves I’ve been putting off building in the basement to ease some of our storage issues?
If video games really were an unqualified good, would “my loser boyfriend stays up all night yelling into his headset about Overwatch/CoD/Fifa/Fortnite” be such a common stereotype?
I’m not suggesting video games are bad (or even that the sometimes-unhealthy way I engage with them is bad), but I am suggesting that “gamers say gaming is good for them, actually” does not provide useful data for analysis or discussion.
The title of this post is at best misleading and at worst simply wrong. From the source that OP linked in a couple other comments here (emphasis mine throughout):
Since the start of July, the app’s downloads have fallen by almost 30% compared to the preceding two months, according to data from app performance tracker Apptopia. … Twitter has gained usually 15 million to 30 million users a month since 2011, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It gained just 10 million users between August and September of this year. … Visits to the web version of X, which still operates as twitter.com, fell since the start of the year, with global web traffic down 10% in August and US traffic down 15%, compared to a year ago, according to an analysis by Similarweb. … So far in September, daily users are down to 249 million, a roughly 2% decrease… Monthly users are down by about the same percentage, now at 393 million users from 398 million in July.
That is emphatically not “loses over 30% of users in two months.” That is, though, “signs of slowing growth” and “signs of the most recent round of dramatic announcements wearing off and folks moving on with their lives” which is why Musk is doing his best to get back into the news cycle.
Maybe OP should go ahead and update the post with a more accurate title to avoid spreading misinformation.
As someone without an Xbox or a PC, Starfield has very much gotten me back into NMS. Loving the last couple of updates, especially as a PSVR2 player.
I hope I get to play Starfield some day, cause it looks like a lot of fun, but it’s not a hardware seller for me. Probably some day I’ll pick up a gaming laptop or steamdeck or something and check it out along with the other PC games I’ve been missing for the past few years.
Yeah, my plan is PS5, too. I was worried because been playing these games on PC almost literally my whole life, from BG1 and IWD through to PoEII and DOSII. But I don’t have a PC that can play any sorts of games right now, so it’s gonna have to be PS5.
Watching a few let’s plays and streams, it sounds like controller support is solid. So despite not being what I’m used to, I’m confident it’ll be a solid experience.
Yeah, it’s not for everyone a lot of folks prefer emulation on steam decks, anbernics, retroids, pis, etc.
The things that drew me to Evercade are:
- Licensed emulation. Lots of folks don’t care about this, but I’m happy to pay for my media when I can. In cases of indie/homebrew releases, devs get paid which is great. In cases of retro releases, rightsholders get paid which is sometimes just someone with a piece of paper saying they own a particular IP. Which is maybe less important than paying the people who directly made a thing, but in the way our society is structured, imo it’s also important to pay people willing to keep something commercially available as long as they aren’t trying to gouge you.
- Curated library. I mean, part of this is just because not everyone will license to Blaze so they need to pick and choose. But back in college when my roommates and I built a mame machine, or later when I was emulating on a raspberry pi. I would mostly play the same handful of games over and over again. I love that I hadn’t heard of like 70% of the Evercade library and hadn’t played like 80% of games in the library until they came out on carts. So much discovery. I also love the fact that not all the games are all-time greats - average and below average games deserve a chance to be preserved, played, and loved as well.
- The community. I probably should have listed this first because I’m not sure if I would have gotten as into Evercade if it weren’t for the community. The folks in the discord are great. Lots of really chill and knowledgeable folks to chat games with, a few colorful characters to keep things interesting, and Blaze themselves are pretty active and transparent in the chat which is really great to see. There’s a weekly games challenge (often but not always high score related) that one of the moderators runs that has lots of us playing the same games at the same time which is always fun.
Anyway, definitely no judgement for you wanting to enjoy games the way you want - that you are enjoying them at all is the important part. Just wanted to share a little bit about how Evercade works for me for folks who may be curious.
It’s always interesting when someone is like “I wish I could go back to using smaller sites/forums or try some more open/ethical platforms, but I can’t because all of my family are on Facebook.”
Remember just 20 years ago when most of your family wasn’t anywhere on the internet and that was just fine? I recognize that I’m saying this as a semi-isolated weirdo on some relatively obscure corner of the Internet, but it’s okay to not be in constant passive contact with everyone you’ve ever met. Yeah it’s more work to keep in touch with the folks you actually care about if you can’t do so passively via Facebook, but that’s how it always was. Email exists, texts and phone calls exist, meeting up exists.
If there are people you care about you can still keep in touch with them without using the same social media platform as them. Just like in the 90s you didn’t need to read rec.models.railroad to keep in touch with your model train loving uncle.
I get that these connections (whatever one might say of their quality or tangibility if the interaction is just “look at picture, press like button”) are important to people and one of the positives of platforms like Facebook, but if you’re going to bemoan not being able to seek alternatives solely because the entire world isn’t switching with you, it’s important to realize that is a choice and not a requirement.
There were lots of games back then. And many of them were as bad or worse than the shittiest shovelware and template swaps we’ve got today.
Thing is, most people don’t remember the 200 Action Games 3 disc pack at the bottom of the bargain bin cause they sucked.
I’m not disputing that there is more “stuff” these days by raw numbers, with the barrier to creation and distribution of games and such dramatically lowered by ubiquitous and easy to use tooling. But I bet the ratios of good games to shitty games won’t have changed too terribly much over the years.
I gave away my NES, 3DS, Dreamcast, N64, and all related games and peripherals a few years ago cause they were taking up too much room for stuff I barely ever used.
I’ve already played these games on (3)DS back in 2013 or so, so I agree it’s the best way to play em. But I just don’t have the time, money, or space to be a retro game collector (outside of Evercade) anymore so I’ll make do with playing these games on Switch.
I have no illusions that if Facebook and Google had started with proprietary and non-interoperable chat systems that XMPP would be flourishing today. I think that, by and large, we’d be in the same place with it.
People chatting from XMPP to Facebook to chat with folks probably by and large would’ve gotten Facebook accounts for the non-chat functionality that was never interoperable and not part of real time chat communication. Think groups and events.
If you only interacted with Facebook people over XMPP, you were locked out of a huge portion of functionality unless you signed up for Facebook even while XMPP worked.
A lot of people are focused on “extend” in the vein of Facebook and Google playing fast and loose with the XMPP spec and implementation until the whole ecosystem got fucked and then walking away. Which is a real danger. I mean, in a lot of ways Mastodon itself has already proven that. How much fedi drama over the years has been caused by Masoton unilaterally deciding something that other AP microblogging platforms just needed to deal with? Lots of people have beef with Eugen for a reason.
But even more insidious than that will be luring people onto Threads for ancillary benefits and then cutting off that large swath of the fediverse after the drain is complete. Then we would definitely not “end up exactly where we are now.”
Imagine in 3 years. “Ohh threads supports a live chat thread feature but those threads don’t federate. My friends are gonna do one while they all watch the season finale of Marvel Bullshit Infinity. Guess I could sign up for Threads to take part. Hmm I can still follow all my friends in the broader fediverse from here, I can just make this my primary account. Scratch that I’ll make this my only account. Oh, what Threads is turning off federation? Oops sorry everyone else I have no way to reach you anymore, maybe you can switch to threads?”
I’m curious, I’ve never released a mobile app nor had to write a privacy policy.
When the privacy controls says it collects health information and sensitive info, is that because I can put that information in posts that I make and by definition of posting it, Meta has access to it? Or does it indicate specific data collection (somehow) or processing of submitted posts to collect that data from prose?
That is, if I were to post “I am an atheist and have a prescription for a daily control inhaler” does that constitute beehaw processing sensitive information and health information from me? Or does that just fall under general “user content” and the specific categories must come from somewhere specific?
Sorry, argv_minus_one, we Oregonians and Massachusettsers aren’t allowed to note all the things wrong with our states because we get weed and abortions.
I get how it can feel a little inconsiderate for us to gripe in the presence of folks in states where their rights are newly under attack. But also maybe there’s a reason both of our states have high costs of living, low rates of diversity, and pretty bad housing crises?
Of course, sorry I didn’t mean to imply that things aren’t relatively better here. I just get wary when someone talks about how good single-party rule would be for them.
Certainly yes, we have legal weed and nobody is making us register with a government I’d when we wanna look at porn.
However, many - or even most - efforts to address inequality are not real or effective.
The greater Boston area is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. The city itself is largely out of reach for folks not in tech, biotech, or finance. Meanwhile it has a very rich history of discrimination and segregation that continues to this day with no end in sight. Meanwhile, NIMBY “progressives” continue to vote down proposals for new housing - affordable or otherwise.
Lots of folks being priced out of most of the state and moving down south. And kots of folks wanting to move up here, but can’t make the numbers work.
The trouble with single-party rule is when they get too comfortable. MA has been essentially a single-party state for a long time now. Rather than continually doing good (or bad or anything at all) the legislature has grown lazy and corrupt.
The MA state legislature is one of the least transparent legislatures in the nation. Many legislators are firmly in the pocket of corporations and special interest groups. Our public transit is actively crumbling. And they have sent hardly anything of consequence to the governor’s desk this year.
Single-party rule - no matter the party - is bad news. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that they were able to FUD the ranked-choice voting initiative out of existence in 2020, so there’s no end in sight.
Let’s say you run a moderately successful flea market. You own a moderately sized field. You employ a staff of accountable organizers to vet and select your vendors to ensure they aren’t selling anything you don’t want at your market (say Nazi paraphernalia, guns). You have security staff and volunteers at the event itself to ensure vendors and customers are safe - they ensure vendors aren’t selling anything they shouldn’t be, they ensure customers don’t try to steal or assault your vendors, they make sure nobody accidentally sets the field on fire, they manage the parking lot and portapotties.
A collective of artisans admire your success and buy up an adjacent field. While your flea market focuses on second hand and vintage goods, they want somewhere to sell handmade things. The organizers of your event work with the organizers of that event to share strategies and ensure both markets can reasonably remain safe and popular. Since they by and large hold themselves to the same standards as you, you agree to share a parking lot and build paths between your two fields.
A local farmers co-op eventually joins your meta-organization in the same way to offer fresh meat and produce.
Now you have a bustling megamarket. The billionaire that owns the local mall sees a drop in revenue due to folks going to the fields for secondhand clothes, fresh produce, and local art. People aren’t shopping with you as much anymore.
The billionaire comes up with a plan to recapture the market. Open air markets in fields are popular now? The billionaire buys the rest of the farmland around your fields and flattens it. They pour a paved parking lot with a dedicated interchange with the local highway. They promise a mix of big corporate vendors and allow smaller vendors to set up their own tents and sell right alongside everyone else.
You think, wow this is a great opportunity to grow all of our markets even more. You start building pathways from your field into the billionaire’s field so customers can easily get between your markets.
But soon, you start to notice something. People start parking at the billionaire’s field because it is paved and has easy highway access. Some of your vendors have started pulling out of your markets so they can go set up at the billionaire’s field so folks see their tent before they have spent all their money. Vendors who don’t move start having to pull out as the market is no longer worth their time or money. With fewer vendors, even more people avoid your fields and stay in the billionaire’s field.
And you start to notice something else. The billionaire started posting folks at the oath between your fields. Your markets have a few vendors the billionaire and their corporate vendors deem unsavory - erotic art, microbrewed beer, that sort of thing. They won’t allow in any customers who have bought anything from those vendors because they run a family friendly establishment. Soon, the people who still come to your side of the field are avoiding those vendors.
You notice an additional thing. The billionaire isn’t as diligent at vendor management as you are, especially with the amount of resources they’re using making sure nobody is carrying around erotic art from your market. While the side of the field near the parking lot where all the corporate vendors are is bright and shiny, you’ve noticed some questionable things happening near your side of the field. The antiques dealer is selling Nazi paraphernalia. The information tent for the local gun club has started to sell firearms with no background checks. The carnival toy vendor is secretly selling opiates. Folks who shop there keep trying to get into your markets and your security folks are having a hard time keeping a handle on things. You don’t have the resources to screen everyone who comes in. You end up having to fence off your paths to prevent folks coming from that market from causing harm to your vendors and customers.
But by this point most of your customers are accustomed to using the fancy parking lot and shopping with the corporate vendors. They’re confronted with a decision: do they just keep going to the billionaire’s field and get their clothes from the TJ Maxx tent or are they willing to make two stops so they can still peruse the cute vintage clothing?
Driving all the way around the fields to get to the other parking lot is pretty inconvenient so don’t bother. Eventually you can’t make the property tax payments for your field and you have to sell. The dream is done. The billionaire buys up the fields and expands their market.
Now rewind. You are an enthusiastic customer of the farmer’s market. How do you feel about the billionaire’s plan to buy up adjacent farmland?
(I was not able to work in a metaphor for meta “extending” activitypub with “new features” that aren’t part of the spec and forcing the rest of the fediverse to comply or get left behind)
The trouble is, many hackathons these days aren’t “programming tournaments.” They are advertising for a company/group or a way for that company/group to solicit new business ideas.
This goes double for the blockchain space where everything is about appearances and hype.
So as others have said, I don’t think you should be upset about the “politics” of the winners, but rather about the actual purpose of the “hackathon.”
Right, but “just use cameras” is what I mean by “niche peripherals.”
Other than the Wii, no modern consoles have had an installed user base for Move/Kinect/Camera type stuff to make it worth it for many developers to get involved. And even the Wii was just mostly shovelware waggle games, though as I mentioned there were some Wii Zapper games that approximated lightguns.
I think at this point we’re past the sorts of external cameras and tracking necessary for lightgun things even more than we already were. This sort of stuff has already moved to VR and I don’t know that we’re gonna get them back in the physical realm any time soon.
Lightguns don’t work on LCD screens, so they were not feasible on most consoles once folks started swapping out their CRTs.
Wii had a handful of light gun like games (that used the sensor bar of course) with the Wii Zapper, but other than that games of this type have needed more niche peripherals (Kinect, PS camera, now VR) that have made them more niche.
A 45 minute “round table” with multiple rando masto instance admins? That doesn’t sound like enough time for the table to get very round.
It sounds more like 5 minutes introduction, 30 minute presentation by Meta, 10 minutes Q&A. But oops our presentation ran just a bit long, and I really do have a hard stop at noon so we really only have about 5 minutes for questions thanks for all of the valuable feedback we’ll be sure to circle back offline.
I’ve been enjoying the Evercade Piko Collection 3 cart recently. When new carts come out I like to try out every game and go in-depth on a least a couple games so I have a reason to come back to it later after there’s a new shiny out.
So I’ve been playing and streaming 40 Winks (I’m about halfway through now), enjoying some Radikal Bikers, and loving to hate the hilariously bad Sword of Sodan.
Over the years, I’ve become one to keep my media use as legit as possible. No judgement on anyone who doesn’t, but for a variety of reasons I have chosen to.
For retro games, that means my process is:
Though honestly I can’t really be bothered to tinker with shit as much anymore these days, so often (but not always) by the time I arrive at unlicensed emulation as the solution I’ll just decide to play something else instead.