Stipulation: You can’t pirate it.

Very good wording: “A conservative, or a Republican”

I’ll admit, some of the earliest context I had on Chinese gaming was that they had a lot of cheaters; that there was even a greedy, cultural belief that the ends justified the means, and that if you got the win screen, it didn’t matter what you did to get there. Some game publishers even went so far as to block Chinese IP addresses/VPNs to keep them out of game servers.

I’m curious if you feel that was ever true, or whether that’s changed over time.

Part of the reason we call some securities liquid, vs not, is that some can’t easily be divided.

The govt can’t easily take hold of 1.3% of someone’s family mansion. Or a rare painting that they got hold of.

A solution that stops evil people from being greedy for all of future society, gaming whatever our system is to hoard resources? No, I don’t.

Whether under capitalism or socialism, either system would need frequent attention and intervention by thoughtful, socially responsible people to watch for abusers of the system.

Gonna slam people with a bit of reality here: I think it could’ve had staying power if people could afford it. And that’s not a statement on hardware companies making it too expensive - it’s a statement on people choosing to fight equality and encourage wealth hoarding.

If your market is the tiny group of wealthy consumers that can afford it, who will buy singleplayer games only, it’s not going to go far. You need. People. Able. To buy it.

A streamers I like played through Avowed, and didn’t feel it had nearly as many problems as the internet claimed.

It can be people budding into the genre. They’ve heard about how nice Steam is, and maybe play some games on a cheap laptop, but recognize a genuine desktop is the better experience.

One streamer I follow is in that situation. She streams off her PS5 and Switch, but has a donation incentive to help build her PC.

Hey, I fed your comments on my AI-generated MR into my AI, and it said it fixed it, but it didn’t change the code at all. Can you just approve it anyway?

Final Fantasy XIV has some good ones. The most signature would be Emet Selch, from Shadowbringers. The big challenge on his part was that the “Ascians” were seen as these cringey, Kingdom Hearts-style grimdark villains for a long time, and Shadowbringers had the challenge of turning them into complex characters.

His voice actor, René Zagger, isn’t even known for much more than that role and he plays it very well - achieving both jesting Kafka-esque mocking and jesting, as well as earnest, righteously-driven rage.

Another one, I’ll only refer to as The Mastermind, from Ace Attorney Investigations 2. The whole game structures its 5 cases towards that pinpoint much better than you’d realize, while still telling a great story up until then. The Mastermind themselves acts in a somewhat melodramatic way before you identify them, but has some appreciable complexities to them that add to the character journey Edgeworth is getting in that game.

There is a free weekend for MISERY, so I guess I’ll try that. (4-5 player coop game)

I think the exclusive model could still work, but it requires a VERY compelling group buy-in. Remember back when there was a very wide set of games for which you had to have a PlayStation to play them. Even Nintendo still succeeds at this, albeit with a current dip due to a low number of Switch 2 exclusives. No matter how much anyone here would fuss about it being anti-consumer, eventually there’d be enough compelling reasons, and some people may just bite the bullet even if they’re regularly PC gamers. From there, that’s where the real money is; getting people to keep burning money on live-service games on that given platform, since people are locked in.

No way can one or two occasional console exclusives manage that wall of compulsion on their own.

Seemed to be a lot of the postgame bosses in CO. After one try, I understood them all as extra challenges available for those who want them. But given they’re literally just rhythm timing that eventually makes you invincible, I don’t quite know who’d find that interesting.

Final Fantasy X. Technically last boss has some auto-win thing to it, but the one before that is a tough challenge.

What killed it for me is, the one just before was very technical. There’s a shifting elemental stance that you can come up with counter strategies to, and it felt like a well thought victory.

But the final boss? WHAM, huge damage. And again, HUGE DAMAGE. It became a numbers check, and I didn’t feel like grinding to keep up, so I watched the ending on YouTube.

When looking at the social anxiety epidemic across America, very much affecting young people, I’m sorry to say this is not true.

People think they’re unique in not wanting to pick up a phone to order a meal from a restaurant, but it’s everyone now. SO many people want to minimize social contact to an extreme degree. It’s part of why political opposition to rampant oppression is so lack luster.

Accumulation of power is a common motive regardless of political system. Money is just one way power gets expressed.

Not claiming our system is perfect by any means. But this thought, to me, always felt like kicking the can down the road.

I should get a cheap laptop and start self hosting…

People can run their own justifications for piracy, but god this has always been a shitty one.

It’s like not considering veganism because “The cow’s already dead. It’s been chopped up in that steak on the counter. Me refusing to eat it won’t change anything.”

Feels like many times I’ve heard in my life:

“We’d like to change this law.”
“You can’t change this law. See, it’s written here: It’s the law.”
“I’m…not contesting what it is. I’m saying I want to change it. We set it in place, we can make changes to it.”
“…But that’d be…against the law…”

I just go to YouTube, Lemmy, BSky, maybe a few others. I don’t go directly to any major gaming news sites, since they’ve had declining track records for decades.

And of course, Steam. Criticize the monoculture if you like, but when Sony and MS have killed their community features in favor of EpsteinNet, it’s not surprising people will go to platforms designed to discuss games.