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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • Yeah, it’s pretty acceptable in any activity where those with interest in it are predominantly of one gender, because the sample size inevitably biases them to win.

    I often think about the surprising accurate assumption that many women in game development are trans women, sometimes used in transphobic rhetoric, but there is an obvious through line between people who are socialised male but feel out of place ending up in less social, online hobbies (coding and gaming) due to that blend of expectations and ostracization.

    I’m a teacher and it’s pretty obvious from a young age how almost all gendered skills are entirely that way due to social expectation.


  • That’s exactly it, we expected better. Regardless of if one likes his music or hates it, he’s built a brand on being a decent human being. Basically every story of him before this week has been one of positivity, I’m pretty sure his rider has always been something like a glass of water and packet of crisps, he’s donated a lot to good causes and generally stood up for those who need it.

    Billionaires are parasites on society, and Kraft is the kind of man who influence global politics and facilitate ethnic cleansing to line his own pockets, and nobody is surprised by that.

    Sheeran showed that the moment anything is on the line, his entire brand of kindness can be bought. I actually believe he thought he was making the non-decision in this, but that was clearly motivated by a desire to keep his brand out of a situation that is basically a for-profit genocide.

    Unless he gets up on stage tomorrow’s show and makes a statement with some balls, his entire persona dissolves, and that is his brand. Sadly we all know he won’t.


  • As a teenager, I played a lot of the early Assassin’s creed games, but fell off the franchise around Origins, when they stopped releasing to steam and kept it on the Ubisoft store, and in general fell away from gaming in general in this era.

    Eventually I pick up Assassin’s Creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla together, probably about 3 years ago and play each. I put about 60+ hours into the first two, and somehow put 200 into Valhalla, basically just mentally switching off and getting 100% of the content, which is a lot for Ubisoft game.

    Perhaps it filled a good ‘get home from work and crash’ need for me, and the experience wasn’t wholly bad by any means, but it’s so bland. I’ve dropped off the franchise entirely now, after being an obsessed fan a decade ago when I was younger and more naive. The entire game basically has 0 positive memories attached, basically no memories at all, good or bad.

    I tend to hold off calling anything that’s not AI slop, but this game needs to be an exception. Assassin’s creed doesn’t deserve all the hate it gets, if you ever boot into the historian exploration mode and just walk around ancient landmarks hearing the development commentary, the respect for the historic is monumental across all the games, and in the gameplay there are lots of interesting aspects amongst everything else, but that everything else is very much the problem. Slop is the perfect word, it’s blended pulp where the quality of the ingredients vary from gourmet to rotten, and I was the pig at the trough.

    I could honestly give e the exact same feedback for the Lego Star Wars Skywalker Saga game. I have find childhood memories but that game doesn’t have an ounce of passion in it.

    These games aren’t helped by the fact that the 3 games I played through after this era were Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium and Hollow Knight, which IMO are the three pinnacles of what games as a medium can be.



  • I’m actually pretty lukewarm on the Witcher franchise. I’ve read all but the most recent book, tried the show for 2 seasons, and played all the games. As much as people hype this franchise as some sort of rival to A Song of Ice and Fire or Lord of the Rings, it absolutely falls short.

    That said, the Witcher 3 specifically deserves all the love it gets. I actually boycotted it for a few years after release because the graphic downgrade it had after the early gameplay trailers came at a time of extreme manipulation of this sort from other studios, but eventually picked it up with both DLC in a sale, approaching it with a lot of cynicism.

    Not only does Hearts of Stone tell what I’d consider the best witcher story, Blood and Wine is a fantastic post-game to the franchise in its vibrant pageantry romp through a riviera; it’s just a happy environment to end Geralt’s story in.




  • I had it from release and honestly, even day 1 it smoked the competition in the city sim genre, releasing with features and scale than Sim City ever had.

    The DLC often introduced more systems, but they did feel ‘extra’, the game was perfectly functional before parks or tourism or natural disasters etc.

    The reason CS:2 felt so necessary is because the first was bloated and had underlying issues in it’s simulation logic, like unrealistically inefficient driving, or a large expansion to residential areas causing all the new residents to die of old age at the same time, crippling the city. Every part of the GUI and logic just felt clunky compared to modern, polished games.