ChaosSpectre

Thats why I suggest phone number exchanfe for texting. Its not the most secure but RCS is at least a security boost.

Events is definitely harder, so I understand that. My wife still uses facebook and tracks that stuff. Ive actually resorted to finding events in local news sources that I put into an RSS feed. If anything Ill make a burner fb account so I can access that kind of stuff, but thus far I have not needed it. Hopefully events become less of a problem as FB becomes more of a problem

I kept telling myself the same bad excuses for why I wouldnt leave FB. Friends, Family, etc. In reality, I barely used the site, so it acted more as an easy connection to others that I didnt even really have connections with anymore because I didnt use the site.

Once it became abundantly clear they were willing to be a surveillance tool for fascist govts, I deleted my profile. I reached out to everyone to find alternative means of connecting, and the irony of that process was I connected with people I hadnt spoken to in literal years, and still talk to them now.

If you think you dont have other ways to stay in contact, you are probably incorrect. Sharing phone numbers is the easiest way to stay in contact, nearly everyone has one. I also connected on signal and discord with a variety of them.

Facebook has convinced people it is essential, but it isnt. You do not need social media to maintain social connections. You just need to be social with the connections you value.

Surprisingly, Firebreak actually revealed a lot about the state of things in the RCU, at least for The Oldest House. Its not told directly to your face particularly, but it is revealed in voice lines, loading screens, and the missions themselves.

Its actually a really fun game. Still needs some work but if they keep with the updates they've done recently, I think it will be fine. The devs did express interest in trying to let players host their own matches in a way that allows Firebreak to survive any sort of server shutdown. The game is already P2P for the most part, so probably wont take too much work.

If I've learned anything about corpos denying something that makes them looks bad, its that it has absolutely happened and the level of severity is based inversely on the level of denial.

Also a friendly reminder that if every US church were to house 2 homeless people, homelessness would be ended.

Or as an ICE agent recently put it, "Fuck them kids"

Would love to have this run when i clear the trash bin on whatever OS

Oh so youre saying that AI companies can control what the AI says?

So meta letting their AI sext with children was intentional then...

I dont really think this is an actual problem. Yes, theres a lot of games now, far more than ever before and more releasing in a year than some consoles had in their lifetime. But this is actually a good thing because it means this industry is more accessible than ever and we have very little limit on what experiences we can have.

The actual problem is the diversity and quality of those games due to muddy motivations. Like any entertainment industry under capitalism, artists are not just performing their art because it is their passion, its also to make a living. At the start, the core motivation is passion, a desire to create and innovate and expand on what that medium can be. When that medium reaches a point where a newbie with great talent can become an overnight sensation, then the motivations for creating art in that field become tainted because individuals start to believe that they dont need passion for the art in order to make massive amounts of money. The market will start being flooded with greedy, talentless people who are looking to cash in on the craze.

Ive been gaming since Sega Genesis, and have followed the industry closely most of my life. To this day, I believe everything in modern gaming can be connected back to the insane popularity of Call of Duty 4. Before that game, nearly every game that came out was trying to do something unique. They might share a genre, but they always did something to stand out from the crowd. Very few games were ripping off a competitor, and the ones that did normally did it so poorly that they immediately got ignored. But after the success of CoD4, that changed massively. Everyone was releasing a first person shooter with pvp multiplayer. Games that didnt need multiplayer had it tacked on per publisher demand. Japan went full on stupid and stopped making games that had that particular vibe that only Japanese games had, and even went as far as hiring western studios to redo franchises that absolutely did not need to be redone, with Capcom coming to mind as particularly bad about this. The market was flooded with low quality, cheaply made games trying to get a part of that bag that CoD4 made.

But we actually got lucky during all of this. Xbox and Steam were both platforms that attempted to lift up independent developers. Unlike the film industry, a space was created for low budget game development, and tools to make games were permitted to be accessible for very cheap. What this did was allow those artists who actually have passion in their art be able to take a pathway to creating high quality games. The ripples of that are felt to this very day, with Silksong being a perfect example of why accessibility in a medium is important.

There are a lot of games, and a lot of them suck for sure. A lot of them are rip offs, overpriced re-releases, clones, and even scams. But with that we've also gained so many great games, in so many genres, with new genres being molded like every month. The AAA space is arguably in a state of painful saturation, where budgets are bloated, dev times are too long, quality is poor, and prices are absurd. This will end up in whiplash against the AAA scene in time, probably sooner than later. But unlike when a similar phase happened in the Atari era, almost killing the games industry, that just wont happen this time, because the industry is not reliant on giant corpos to carry it.

What i would recommend as a gamer is to give up on the old notion that you can play all the games that come out. Especially as you get older, you wont have the time and you shouldny try to make the time for all of that. Treat games like people treat music. You cant listen to all of the music, and you shouldn't try to. You find the type of music you like, and search that space to find more things to enjoy. Do the same with games. Dont rush through them, play them at a pace that is fun for you and lets you soak them in, and play the games that specifically appeal to you. Even if its a single game you play on repeat, if it brings you joy then it shouldnt matter.

A more controversial recommendation is stop being averse to spoilers. If your friend plays a game that you dont know if you will ever bother to play, let that friend tell you about the game. Studies have actually shown that players enjoy a game more when they go in knowing spoilers. This might not apply to all games, but from personal experience I can say letting a friend ramble about a game they love that I only have a mild interest in has not only caused me to actually play those games, but games are so rich in detail and varying experiences that I will end up having a very different experience than them that I now get to share with them. Being less averse to spoilers both helps you be able to communicate with more people about gaming, as well as gain new insight on games you might be on the fence about. This can help reduce the amount of games you feel an urge to play but cant make time for by acting as a social filter, or "word of mouth".

"TheGamer" is not and never has been a trustworthy source of game news. They are horrendous for being a click bait website with shallow reporting.

Even this article is shallow as fuck. Their citation is one bluesky post complaining about a frame where a hand looks weird. The rest of the article is them complaining about AI and inferring that the animation studio is using AI based on marketing wording the studio uses.

If its made with AI, then yeah it can fuck off, but I highly fucking doubt that TheGamer is going to be the ones reporting on that with actual journalistic evidence. Hell I'm surprised they aren't using AI themselves with how piss poor their standards are.

Fucking click bait

More proof that anti-cheat and bans just isn't a working approach.

Almost every cheater I've talked to or seen interviewed has said they do it because they like winning. If thats the case, pushing them away isnt getting rid of them, its making them try to win harder, and they are literally spending money to make that happen.

This means, there is a market for cheaters, one that publishers and devs simply assault instead of realizing they could replace it entirely.

Create a marketplace in your game for cheats. When a player buys a cheat in game, they can turn it on but only in a specific playlist that cheaters get to play in. You dont need to own or turn on cheats to play in that playlist, in case you feel like challenging yourself, but cheaters can use them as much as they want in that playlist. If a cheater wants to go into cheat free playlist, their cheats get turned off by the game and they have to play like everyone else. Cheat free playlists can have cheat detection, and if you are caught cheating then you get banned from cheat free playlists permanently, but you arent banned from the game or the cheat playlist.

This deters cheaters from paying third parties for cheats, gives them a space to experiment in, makes money for the company running the game, and reduces the amount of cheaters in regular public lobbies. It also creates a space of challenge for people who don't cheat, sorta like how people will do no death runs in souls games.

Sure, it isnt a perfect solution, but its far better than punishing every player with invasive tech, while simultaneously letting a market of cheat sellers thrive. For a bunch of capitalists, its wild they haven't realized they are missing out on money with cheats.