That’s some quality plausible deniability right there. Flared base and everything.

That’s definitely ending up in someone wearing a dog collar…

Yeah, that’s certainly one odd aspect. Also, there’s a ton of other methods to handle labour shortages. Like activating underused groups, such as women. Or offering retraining so people can switch to different jobs. And higher pay for sectors with shortages doesn’t hurt either, considering the already very low pay in Greece.

Running your existing workforce ragged is NOT the way to deal with this.

But hey, maybe we’re missing some cultural or political piece of the puzzle as to why they went this route.

The Greeks are insane for going along with this. Revolutions have started over less. Clearly their politicians no longer have the best interests of the Greek people in mind.

If it runs that poorly and it’s still lacking basic things like ultrawide and DLSS, you’re clearly doing something very wrong as a developer. If you want to make PC money, you should also properly use the platform.

I miss forums as well, and I’m actually moving back to them. Back in the early 2000’s, I visited like a dozen forums each day. I was a member of like three watch forums, a camera forum, a Star Trek forum, some gaming forums and others. Just ‘doing the rounds’ kept you busy for a while. People also were insanely knowledgeable on those niche forums, and they all had their own specific culture and flavor to them.

Places like a niche subreddit are… OK at best. They are convenient and easy to visit, but don’t tend to have the level of knowledge and discourse that I generally enjoy. You also run the risk of your sub getting ruined by people who are into the wrong aspects of your particular hobby. For example, on a watch FORUM, the discussions are about design, mechanical features, history, photography, how to repair, etc. etc. On the subreddit, a lot of posts tended to be drive-by posters who ‘found a watch and wanted to know what it’s worth’. or ‘is this fake’. The subreddit didn’t curb that, so eventually I and many others just stopped going there. It was basically too easy for people to post there just because, well, they could. Whereas on an actual watch forum, you can do a bit stricter moderation and the registration requirement weeds out low effort posting.

Some consider that ‘gatekeeping’, but I see it as a valid way of protecting one’s chosen community.

I don’t think I’ve met any Brazilians back in those days; (online) gaming is really expensive there from what I heard, right?

One fun thing in the old COD lobbies was always to teach others slurs and general cursing in your language. I learned how to curse folks out in like 50 languages. Each country also has its own unique style of cursing. We Dutch really like to incorporate diseases for example.

I’m certainly not going to say you’re wrong on that first part. I’ve been online since 1996. At that time, the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy… well… going online felt like coming home. Those were my people. I still really miss those days.

But I also know that the experience of someone not like me would’ve been wildly different. I learned a bajillion slurs on COD lobbies after all. It’s a good thing that more people now feel welcome online, as it led to platform growth and functionality that we otherwise wouldn’t have had if it was just ‘my kind of people’.

The current safe, sanitised, gentrified gaming sphere also has benefits: COD lobbies these days are very pleasant by comparison. You even have to sign a code of conduct to get on multiplayer. It feels more welcoming, less hostile. Of course, companies certainly have been financially incentivized to attract as wide an audience as possible. For example, the very first GTA game sold about 6 million copies. GTA V has sold 200 million. And with ever-increasing development budgets, you can’t afford to cater to a niche, you want to cast as wide a net as possible to recoup those costs.

I miss that era. Companies didn’t mind a bit of edginess and weren’t afraid to market to adults. The console culture itself also isn’t what it used to be.

These days, gaming consoles all need to be safe enough for five year olds to play on them. And it’s caused everything to be just too bland and safe, both in marketing and the console itself. Can’t really have things like Xbox 360 Uno with the live camera feed and no moderation. Or the wholly uncensored COD lobbies.

Here’s the way I see it: to most people, that word is not linked to a disability. It’s just a word to describe bewilderment or exasperation at someone, something, some situation. It’s not intended to be hurtful.

I have a disability as well. I see about twenty percent of what normal people see. I’m pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses. I don’t get offended when someone uses terms like ‘short-sighted’ or when someone says ‘are you blind?’ to someone else. We also use seeing metaphors quite a lot if you pay attention to them. I’m not offended by it, because I know the language is not intended to offend me.

I’ve also worked with people who had actual mental disabilities. And trust me, most of them know damn well when something’s intended as an insult or when it’s just metaphorical use.

Airbus is Ableist!

This certainly sounds iffy.

I’ll say this: if this sort of thing poses an actual potential risk to passengers and crew, the people involved need to be given the harshest possible sentences. Take them out back and feed them into a woodchipper slowly if they wilfully endanger lives.

Guess I should stock up while I can huh?

I’ve been a RPI fan since the beginning and have used their boards for all sorts of projects and tinkering. But it’s hard not to feel like it’s losing sight of what made it attractive in the first place: low power and low priced computing. It had its charm in buying a Pi Zero and just chucking emulators on it and handing them out to folks who might want to have a go.

But with the more expensive, more powerful hardware you just can’t really use them for things like that anymore. Just too expensive and too much oomph for the use case.

We’ll see if the company finds its way. But this usually isn’t a good sign…

Sometimes it can be really fun when developers take an existing IP and completely flip the script on it. For example, when most people thjnk about Metal Gear, they think about sneaky stealth missions in real time. And yet there’s also an actual turn-based card battler in the series. Two of them in fact: Metal Gear Acid 1 & w. Came out the serie era as Doom RPG.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Acid

Ever played 2005’s Doom RPG? That’s an oddball title for sure. It was a pretty early phone game. Supposedly there’s some wonky software that lets you run it on a PC, but I never bothered with that. It was really fun when it originally launched.

https://youtu.be/tY3xi0HPrbs?si=MIr-eH2c1Gc5Pr7T

Heck, I enjoy platforming as well - in platforming games. Absolutely love games like Uncharted for example. And I wouldn’t complain if Eternal had SOME platforming, like 2016 had as well. Some verticality is nice to have. But Eternal was just too much and too challenging to be fun. I really don’t want to redo a particular jump-dash-dash-jump-dash sequence ten times. Most actual platforming games aren’t THIS brutal.

I’ve certainly seen a fair few topics with this sentiment, so I know others were put off by it as well.

All I want is none of that fucking platforming from Eternal. I’ve finished 2016 a bunch of times, but I still haven’t seen the end of Eternal because of all the unnecessary and annoyingly difficult platforming sections. I could deal with a few, but that was just too much.

If they put in platforming, it’s a no-buy from me.

Couple years ago, I visited a historic grand prix that featured classic F1 cars. They also had open pits, so you could walk up and ask questions and literally stand next to the cars.

I was standing next to a 70’s F1 car when they performed an engine test. I was wearing thick, professional earplugs and the biggest Peltors you’ve ever seen. When they fired that thing up, I lasted all of five seconds before I walked out. At that point, it was no longer sound but sheer pressure. You could feel it in your chest.

As for how the mechanics do it? Easy, they’re all deaf as a post. Even the best earpro can’t prevent that kind of hearing damage, especially if that’s your chosen career. If you’re worried about good earpro not being enough, best advice is to put distance between you and the object/career path involved.

When you can pack the peak amount of players into a decent sized ballroom, that’s never a good sign for your game’s future.

At this point they’re probably better off just refunding buyers and shuttering the game entirely. Doesn’t feel like this is a salvageable situation.

Fuck ban-happy Reddit and its IPO shenanigans. That place is a dumpster fire that I wouldn’t piss on to put out.

Welcome to Lemmy. It might not be perfect, But At Least We Aren’t Reddit ™

My brother in Buddha… how about we don’t do that.