That is waaaaaay too cohesive of a text.
Trump would never stay on one point for that long.
He used to purposefully change topics frequently to keep on bullshitting when he was less demented and now he just isn’t able to focus for long enough to talk about one topic for that long.
Nice review, thank you.
I am pretty sure Epic has given this game away for free in the past so you may have access to it without having to buy it.
I think it is worth a try if you want a relatively relaxed platformer experience (or you are a hardcore gamer and want to try the final boss unprepared, which I am told is quite the challenge).
You comment and comment and explain and explain shit that everyone already knows.
It is like you just recently learned what marketing is and now you feel like you know some big secret.
Just to make it short.
Every product in the world is marketed in a way to motivate consumers to buy.
That is not inherently immoral.
You said every successful game monetizes by maximizing addiction and frustration.
I have proven you wrong by naming games that just DO NOT MAXIMIZE FRUSTRATION.
Yeah off course even those games dangle stuff in front of you that you are supposed to buy.
That’s the whole business model of f2p games.
But there are different ways to get to the players money.
There are those that indeed trigger responses to frustration.
This is absolutely prevalent in mobile games or even those million deckbuilder games.
But there just are also games that use other ways to make players buy mtx.
Again, you can play PoE, LoL, CS and many other games for literal thousands of hours without ever getting coaxed into frustrating barriers like a Diablo Immortals would do to players.
You said there aren’t. So you were wrong.
So have fun running around with a goalpost in your hand, I am done.
right?
No, still wrong.
Obviously it is something that is not given to you for free.
It is a product and the developers/publishers are doing business after all.
And yes Sherlock, it is qol functionality that people playing the endgame might want and that is not included in the free version of the game.
But every functionality that any player ever needs is available for far less than what any other AAA title costs up front.
PoE is mainly financed by purely cosmetic supporter packs and whales.
Is that much more ethical than what you described? Maybe not.
But it sure as hell is not banking on frustrating the average user and thus a completely different form of monetization than the one that you just doubled down on insisting is the only one there is.
So again as I said, you are just plain wrong.
Oh and in CS I don’t think you can buy any functionality at all.
Only cosmetics, that don’t do anything for you in the game.
Any successful example is optimized for addiction and frustration.
That is just plain wrong.
Addiction I guess but frustration definitely not necessarily.
There are countless examples of highly successful games that do not monetize like that.
You can happily play PoE for thousands of hours without paying a penny; if you want to get into trading drop like 20 bucks for some stash tabs and you are ready to go again for absolutely any content the game has to offer.
CS or LoL also work just fine for f2p players.
And I say that as a player that fucking hates the new generation of soulless live service games.
Not that my opinion matters any more than the next person’s, but I also can’t recommend Celeste enough.
It does so many things so very right.
The pure gameplay is crisp and responsive platforming.
Like any good platfmorer it has some specific mechanics that make it unique, but every one is intuitive enough to pick up easily enough.
I have heard it called something like “the hardest platformer that everyone can finish.”
And it is true. I could never finish some of the harder SMB levels but I never got too frustrated with Celeste.
And if I were, there would have been accessibility options to make the game more approachable.
But it also caters to the hardcore crowd with completely optional collectibles that are organically included into the gorgeous level design.
It is speedrunnable for those folks.
And as if that wasn’t enough to make a good platformer it also tells a heartwarming story supported by a beautiful soundtrack.
Sorry I am rambling, but Celeste is fucking awesome.
Elden Ring runs just fine on my Deck, but it drains my battery pretty fast.
But I have a refurbished non OLED deck so ymmv.
I mean wouldn’t you also much rather be bribed than blackmailed?
A now adult woman that was only 17 years old when the incident in question happened.
Which is clearly stated in the article that you willfully missquoted.
Those Larian Studios people seem pretty nice from what one can hear.
Lovecraftian art is inspired by the tone and the mystery of Lovecrafts works and not by his racism.
But that aside I didn’t downvote you for your first sentence.
I personally wouldn’t even have downvoted you for your second sentence, even though I strongly disagree with it.
I downvoted you for your edit, which ironically is totally tone deaf.
Noone downvoted the fact, that you called the dude some stuff. You got downvoted for attacking Valve over an innocent sale of supernatural mystery games.
Having read some of his works, it sometimes is scarring to read how he pictures arabic or black peope.
He definitely let his personal racism seep into his stories.
So I think the argument can be made, that one shouldn’t just consume his works without critically reflecting on the author.
There is one story set in Egypt that I remember, where the open racism kept on breaking my immersion repeatedly.
But I agree that calling Valve tone deaf for highlighting lovecraftian games misses the spot.
Lovecraftian art is inspired by the tone and the mystery of Lovecrafts works and not of his racism.
Totally different genre, but I liked how Celeste approached this.
If you struggle to complete it there are tons of accessibility options to make the game more approachable.
And the content necessary to finish the games story is not too much, while giving challenging -well- challenges to anyone who wants to spend more time with the game.
And you clear the game screen by screen making it possible to only play it a short bit at a time.
It’s almost a bonus that the story and soundtrack are fucking beautiful.
Financial success.
I mean he defrauded rich people.
Off course he gets the book.
That’s just wrong for the simple reason that NATO is vastly superior in any form of conventional warfare.
NATO against russia would be nothing like WW2.
It would be a one sided beating.
And russia would lose and lose fast.
But russia would still have no incentive to be the first to launch nukes, because that would change the situation from bad to total annihilation.
Like I don’t know that, like anyone doesn’t know that.
Still noone, not the winning side, and especially not the losing side has any real incentive to launch them first.
It’s basic game theory, you never choose the option that has you lose absolutely everything, even if the alternative has you lose something big (like a war, or even your life).
Even crazed dictators like Putin know this.
And not even Putin can launch a nuke on his own. Even he needs generals and engineers that all know that not only they themselves will die if they obey, also their families will die, everyone they know will die if they obey.
We will never see full scale nuclear war, because noone at all could ever want that.
But Putin benefits from rubes just letting him bully everyone around him because, boo hoo he is so crazy and scary and after so many crossed red lines the next one surely is the one that makes him suicide himself, his wife, his daughter, his country, his place in history and anyone or anything he ever valued or cared about.
Good job repeating russian propaganda.
Edit: Not that I care about internet points.
But the thought that opposing russia would lead to nuclear war is exactly what Putin wants people in the west to think to keep bullying and suppressing everyone around him.
He is bluffing though and he knows it.
He said delivering supplies to Ukraine was the red line.
He didn’t react when we did.
He said delivering arms to Ukraine was the red line.
He didn’t react when we did.
He said delivering tanks to Ukraine was the red line.
He didn’t react when we did.
He said delivering planes to Ukraine was the red line.
He didn’t react when we did.
Because he can’t. He knows he would lose everything.
No steps forward…
I get it.
I sometimes put AAA games on my wishlist anyway.
Not to buy them on release but to get alerted when they go on discount at some point down the line, which is generally how I use my wishlist mostly.
I have some unreleased indie games on there as well, but those I might just buy full price anyway whenever I feel like it or have a little extra free time to play a bit more at a time.