Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]

  • 3 Posts
  • 522 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: May 1st, 2023

help-circle
  • You should, if all goes well, be able to win. I'd look for a defense drone, I'd upgrade shields to at least 3 bubbles (I know you have the Zoltan shield, that helps, but still, for the flagship you're going to want more shields), and I'd maybe swap out a beam for a pew-pew if you can find a decent one. Or upgrade your hacking. That works too. And sell some stuff. I'd sell both the system repair and the anti-drone, but that's just because I find the anti-drone downright useless. Sell one of your missiles, probably the breach, and sell a beam, you absolutely don't need 3 of them. With that cash you can buy some upgrades, I would prioritize hacking and oxygen. A helm upgrade also wouldn't hurt, but only do that if you have the cash for it, I wouldn't make it a priority!


  • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]togames*Permanently Deleted*
    ·
    28 days ago

    So you're using some weird definition of "skinner box" where you simply mean "human inputs lead to various outputs". Why use this definition? By this definition a fucking mathematical function is a skinner box.

    I simply do not understand, in general, what you're trying to say.


  • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]togames*Permanently Deleted*
    ·
    28 days ago

    Goosebumps choose your own adventure novels.

    But to take you a tiny bit more seriously, ok? So what? Why does "I have some agency in this story" make a story bad? What actually are you getting at here?



  • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]togames*Permanently Deleted*
    ·
    28 days ago

    All Vidya Gamez are fundamentally Skinner Boxes.

    No they are not and I will fight you. If you mean multiplayer online games, well maybe, you might have a point, but I don't play those games and so I will make no claims about them.

    However. If you call Outer Wilds or Pathologic/Pathologic 2 or Disco Elysium or A Short Hike or Journey skinner boxes, well, you're just wrong. Games are experiences, they're stories that can be more immersive than a movie or a book and if they're done well, holy shit are they good!

    Games are (can be) amazing, and I'm sick of pretending they're not.














  • I agree we probably wouldn't get any more Assassin's Creed or Deadpool and Wolverine. Very likely those kinds of media would die out in a world where no one pays for media. I have a hard time saying that's a bad thing. We'd instead have more weird little indie projects, which are so, so much better in every way. But sure, if you feel morally queasy about "stealing" (it's not stealing, it's copying) from giant corporations who make artistically bankrupt crap, I'm not going to convince you otherwise, and it would be a waste of my time to try and do so.

    Maybe I should point out here that sometimes I do go out of my way to pay for media (especially games) when I don't have to. I bought Dwarf Fortress on Steam, even though the devs give it away for free and I donated to them a couple times before they released it on Steam. They are living off the money people pay for Dwarf Fortress and I'm so glad they're able to do so. I also bought my sister a copy of Pathologic 2 she has never (and probably will never) play because I bought my copy on sale and loved it and felt bad that I hadn't paid full price to a dev team that put their heart and soul into the game and had it sell abysmally for some reason. (Side note, play Pathologic 2, it's good!) I bought the Celeste soundtrack from Lena Raine's bandcamp because I love it so much, even though it's extremely easy to find and I've actually lost access to my bandcamp account.

    I guess I'm saying there's nuance here and I like it when actual artists who make good art are paid. It's just that in our current society, buying a DVD or paying for Netflix or paying for Xbox gamepass or anything like that doesn't benefit the artists, the vast majority of any money you spend to acquire media goes straight to wealthy executives and I just don't see anything wrong with not giving them more money than they're already getting.



  • That's a common misconception. But it's not true. Artists will keep making art whether they're paid or not. Anti-piracy rhetoric tends to come from large corporations (AAA game studios, movie studios, publishing houses, record labels) who demand ever-increasing profits, not from the artists themselves. The people who actually do the work to make games, movies, songs, books, whatever are basically never well-paid, instead their corporate overlords make all the profit and pay the people who actually make the art you enjoy as little as they can possibly get away with, just as with every other job under capitalism.

    Pirating media does absolutely no harm unless you're pirating from a small indie creator. But if you just want to play the latest Ubisoft slop or watch the latest Marvel movie, go ahead and pirate. The money you'd spend on them go straight into the pockets of wealthy executives, not to the artists who do the work.