Not the point but I'd kind of rather be in times square than some remote mountain. That's a short walk or middling train ride to less crowded but very fun spots.
Also in no way does my day to day life feel like I'm being constantly bumped into. Try turning off notifications.
Under the proposed settlement agreement, RealPage admitted to no wrongdoing and faced no financial penalties.
What a fucking joke.
And as always, Ars has a significant number of boot lickers in the comments. At least they're mostly down voted to oblivion.
Linux is free, for a trivial counter example.
Difficulty settings are, first and foremost, accessibility settings.
I'm not opposed to more options but I think this tactic is distracting and generates more pushback than it wins converts.
Are games art? I'd say so, usually. Some are more like toys than art, but many have creative expression
If they are are, must all art be accessible to all people? Well, what does accessible mean exactly? To understand it completely? Then I'd say trivially no, because there are many books that are incomprehensible to many people. No one is going to say "House of Leaves" is inaccessible and the author did a gatekeeping by writing it as such. No one is going to say Finnegans Wake is ableist because it's hard to understand.
Must all aspects of all art be completable by all people? I'd also say trivially no. You might have a segment in French that doesn't translate well. You can dub it or subtitle it, but the original experience will remain inaccessible unless the audience spends years mastering French.
I bring that up because some games will have within the game, not a metagame menu setting, easier or harder routes. For example, Elden Ring with a big shield and spirit ashes is significantly easier than a naked parry build. Is the expectation that everyone should be able to finish in both styles? If there's a hard mode, must everyone be able to finish it?
Should everyone be able to trivially 100% every game?
Personally I think the floor is everyone should be able to interface with the game. Change inputs. Add subtitles.
I don't really think "I can't party this spear guy" is an accessibility problem the same way "I'm color blind and can't read the text" is.
But again, I don't care if someone wants a god-mode with auto-parry. It just feels like it's bundling some unrelated ideas together. You're not necessarily disabled if you're bad at parrying in dark souls.
My therapist tells me everyone is doing their best, even the housemate that leaves dirty dishes all over the house and never flushes the toilet. I grapple with this on the regular.
I get my clothes from the thrift store. Sadly, even that's getting more expensive. Used to be could get jeans for $5 and now it's more like $20
It's debt in the sense of obligation, not literal finance. If we get more volume, we're going to be obligated to change this so it does something smarter than dumping output to a csv on disk. For now it's fine, even if it's annoying to scp and parse the files every time you want to see something.
I don't think there's less stuff. I think there's more slop and trash, so the percent of good stuff is lower.
When we’re constantly ‘killing time’ on our phones/screens
Reminded me of that quote from House of Leaves
Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.
After a particularly potent evening of farts, someone whose identity I will protect had their ass dubbed "the gates of hell". I can imagine this hanging in their bathroom.
I remember 20 years ago an adult friend of mine (I'm getting old) told me "you can only start a business in the US", and that's why she wanted to stay here. Showing her businesses based from elsewhere was not persuasive.
People believe weird things about the US.
Sounds reasonable.
Now if only they'd build more protected bike lanes here (NYC) instead of on street parking. I would bike a lot more if it felt safe.