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Reminds me of Rimworld and the fact that, if there is no other accessible entities on the map with a nutrition stat, children and animals will b-line for booze that raiders drop and get hammered. I can’t count the number of Muffalo, dogs, and cats that I have had which end up with an alcohol tolerance hedif out of nowhere.
Thank you. All of these things are actually very well defined. Nazism, Fascism, Authoritarianism. These are not words that are just thrown around haphazardly and have no meaning. The ones who DO use them inappropriately are those whom they describe. It is a concerted effort to redefine or undefine them so there is no longer a word to describe them.
By definition a legal framework is not a social contract. Technically there IS a social contract that we will agree to follow the laws, but not everyone does that one either. We violate speed limits, download media, burn crosses in front yards.
There are also many cases where laws do not cover the violations of a social contract. Slurs are protected speech under most circumstances, but that does not mean that there are no consequences to utilizing them in your vocabulary in public. You will never go to jail for it, but in using them you violate a social contract of tolerance, and thus the members of society around you should not tolerate your presence. If you pull a gun while using those slurs, that is a clear indicator that you intend harm, specifically on the people to whom the slurs refer. This violates the social contract of safety, which means that you are open to being harmed yourself by the members of the contract around you. They protect the safety of the members by preventing you from harming them. It is actually covered in the US laws and has been condoned by society. The “murder is wrong” tautology fails very quickly in the face of reality. Is it OK to kill someone who is actively raping an infant? How about if they have a knife to your partner’s or child’s throat? What about if they point a loaded gun at a crowd of unarmed protestors and are not a legally recognized peace officer? Your moral code determines where that line is, but everyone has a line. Do you condone Israel’s actions against the Palestinians? Let’s go for the good ole trolley problem. Do you pull the lever? Is that OK?
I can see that point. I get the same thing sometimes when I casually defend social media companies censoring speech. That is why I usually do it like I did here; direct, verbose, and overtly unambiguous.
People do need to have an understanding that applying an ideal to all people does not mean that you condne the behavior of anyone in specific. I do, personally, hold the philosophy that social contracts need to be mutual and by nature cannot be applied ubiquitously. That is the essence and source of the Tolerance Paradox. That is the most easily digested version, but all social contracts hold the same paradox. Tolerance, compassion, inclusion, safety, etc. The only reason any of of them function is because we all agree on them. It is safe to drive becuse we all agree that that yellow line means we don’t cross it. We are safe standing on a subway platform because we all agree not to push each other onto the tracks. We are able to lead peaceful lives because we agree not to accost each other in public spaces. We are confident we can shop in stores, attend churches, spend time in parks, and move about in life because we include each other in our spaces.
Those who do not do these things forfeit the confidence they hold in those contracts. If you own a store or business and exclude some group, you should expect to be unwelcomed in the spaces of others. If you express hateful commentary or accost people, you should expect to be accosted and to not lead a life of peace. If you openly declare yourself as a threat to the health, wellbeing, and/or safety of other members of society, you are not owed any of those things. Period. That is the solution to the Social Contract Paradoxes. Those who are not party to them are not protected by them. It would be like if I signed a contract with a roofer to replace my roof and my neighbor started demanding they replace his roof too under my contract. They are not a party to the contract so they derive no benefit from the contract.
No, he is right. The only people ‘cosplaying’ Nazis are Nazis. If you are an actor on stage or film cast to play a Nazi then you are doing your job. If you don a SS pin and a swastika armband you are a fascist and actively advertising yourself as a threat to those around you (unless they look like you). This is “hate speech” which means that it is “free speech” and thus should be protected from government interference. It, on the other hand, can also fall under “fighting words” which are not protected. It all depends on context. In the context of a fascist wannabe dictator taking office who is openly promoting violence against minorities and showing blatant support of white supremacist groups like proud boys and KKK, it falls under the latter. It is also speech that removes ones self from the social contracts of “tolerance”, “compassion”, and “safety”. Just like any contract, the privileges and protections are only afforded to those who are a party to the contract. If someone goes out in a Nazi ‘cosplay’ and gets gunned down, beaten, savaged, spat on, or verbally assaulted they have no room to complain since they wore “speech” that said “I support or intend to do harm to those in my community and I am a threat.”
After what GGG did with balance on POE I am very concerned about POE2. I don’t have time to play a game like it is my job just to participate in endgame content. I really loved POE and put thousands of hours in over the years, but they just kept killing the builds I was able to put together that worked for me in the time I was able to play. Also, I have never actually been able to beat a single endgame fight. And it wasn’t a skill issue, it was because I could never get the gear required to actually meet the required damage thresholds.
That first paragraph put me off from the article because it positioned the research on gaming violence as if there were a positive correlation instead of reporting that it is actually negatively correlated. It also did not mention the positive research that came from the studies on game playing and eye hand coordination and the many other benefits video games have been proven to have. The author made it sound like this was the first positive thing about video games.
I agree. People keep suggesting Factorio, which leads me to believe that they have not actually read the post since his friend is into souls-likes and heavy combat games. Factorio is the antithesis of that! I don’t personally play those games (Factorio is one of my most played games), so I can’t make suggestions aside from Monster Hunter.
Consider me a psycho with a hot take, but I have always preferred games that mix the enemy difficulties around in a zone. Something like Ark where, sure, level 3 Dodos spawn on the starting beaches, but a level 70 Spino can spawn not far away and you have to be sure to skirt it lest you become a healthy snack. The steady progression of “zone difficulty” has always bugged me a bit because it is just so far off from realistic. Sure, close to a settlement there would be culling of particularly dangerous creatures, but some of them would still exist (if the settlement is being responsible). And yeah, as you get farther into the wilds those sorts of cullings would fall off rapidly, but to say that there would be areas where there are no easy monsters or no hard monsters, even in the wilds, is just not accurate.
Also, you get the same feeling of accomplishment, sometimes more, when you have died to hard monsters in starting areas a bunch of times then learned to skirt aggro properly, but then suddenly you come back after being out for a while and utterly decimate them. Just feels so good.
Nope, they are covered most of the time by what is known as the “corporate veil”.
Better explained than I can do here: https://federal-lawyer.com/when-can-a-ceo-be-held-personally-liable/
Essentially, unless they are personally doing it, they are protected. Embezzle millions and you go to jail, poison a water supply, kill thousands, give birth defects, cancer, and a myriad of other health issues to a community at large and only the corporation is liable/culpable.
Personally I want to see the criminal shield removed for corporations. All C-Level executives become personally liable for any illegal actions, malfeasance, slander/liable, or injurious action perpetrated or instigated by the company with the ONLY defense being proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt (not just reasonable doubt) that an actor within or without the company caused the action with the express intent of harming the C-Level executives, either specific or generally.
Fuck corporate personhood. Fuck people making a LLC and doing whatever the fuck they want under the guise of the company then the company declares bankruptcy while they run off like a cartoon character with bags of money. Leadership liability and culpability should be the norm, not the exception.
This is the central myth of “free speech” under the 1st Amendment.
The 1st Amendment only protects individuals exercising speech and expression from laws being passed or used to silence said speech or expression and from agents of the government abridging the rights. That is a lot, but it is also all. Private citizens are allowed to abridge each other’s speech as much as we like. Private companies can censor whatever they want. This is why the guy wrote a letter to Steam, because literally ANY larger action would have crossed the line.
Factorio: 2344
Path of Exile: 2736
Rimworld: 2191
Kerbal Space Program: 1071
I have a bunch of honorable mentions in the several hundred hours ranges that are only not 1k+ because I have severe ADHD and something else became a hyperfocus before they hit that point:
Backpack Hero
Ark
The Last Spell
Timberborn
Factory Town
Dyson Sphere Program
Loop Hero
Brotato
Satisfactory
Path of Achra
Against the Storm
Desynced
Gabe heads a company which is successful because it respects its employees, customers, and suppliers instead of constantly trying to marginalize and abuse them. They are not perfect by any means, but they do fit into the definition of ethical capitalism, which should not be understated. They don’t employ anticompetitive tactics like bribing/coercing developers into exclusivity contracts. They don’t operate with a bunch of 1099 contractors so they can avoid providing benefits. Etc.
I am getting really tired of these all these chucklefucks being in charge of things they patently do not understand. Modders are the modern lifeline of gaming. They work for free, fix your fuck-ups, and breath life into games that are years and sometimes decades old. Rimworld and Factorio both started their crowd funding campaigns in 2013, and both are wildly popular 11 years later, still selling copies. Factorio is just now coming out with their first expansion, and Rimworld just came out with their 4th. Neither Ludeon Studios (Rimworld) nor Wube Software (Factorio) have had ANY financial need to produce any other projects besides these games. Why are they so wildly profitable and evergreen? They both have rabid modding communities that have been supported and cultivated by the developers constantly fixing and expanding modding support to allow for an infinite variety of new content to be created for their games. Hell, the Vanilla Expanded team of Rimworld modders have actually turned it into a primary income source via Patreon.
AAA devs need to just sit down and thank these modders for tirelessly working on their games after release for free. Ever since DoTA became more popular than Warcraft 3, they all have their panties in a bunch and keep trying to claim ownership over all mods. No, bad developers smacks on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. God, it pisses me off to no end.
This is a future proofing measure. With the enshittification of Windows there is a reasonably sizable share that is looking to migrate. Making an API/front end functional on the platform is just good business. I for one will be switching 95% to Linux the instant Microsoft acts on their patant for putting a mandatory advertising ticket on the screen. Literally the only thing I will use it for is programming things for work.