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Cake day: Feb 13, 2024

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I’m not sure I really agree with the reasoning on why HL:Ep3 was never developed. Sure, Valve game usually revolves around some game-changing mechanics, but at the same time, Episode 3 was more than just a game, but a sendoff of a big franchise, at least for a time, and a promise to their fans: that 3 episodes are made.

I think that this was one of the signs of the cracks forming in the game developing sector of Valve. It’s been well known that the dev team within Valve has slowly developed to a more toxic environment where veterans vetoed a lof of stuff from newer employees, leading to stagnation and developers getting silently shunned for working on projects like TF2 because it wasn’t considered “profitable”, when there still was, and is, a sizeable community revolving it.

I would have said playing it safe and making a sort of “best of” of popular mechanics used in the previous games would’ve been the best choice, because that would be the best possible sendoff for the series of episodes. After all, at that point people mainly wanted a conclusion to the story arc, a moment of “this was the HL2 era, thank you for playing”, rather than something completely new.


That’s why customer goodwill is so important. It can save you from doing a major mistake simply by the fans still buying the next game out of support for the studio.

Also, the “if we don’t get funded” message rubs me the wrong. It feels like an appeal to emotion rather than an honest message. Something along the lines of “we’ll continue looking for funding, though the project will be put on hold” would feel more genuine without tugging on heartstrings.

Let’s see how their new game idea works out. Honestly a prophunt horror game seems interesting, but I feel it’s pretty much done to death by free mods/gamemodes already.


It seems interesting, but at the same time the demos all seem to feature presses/simple gestures like stroking an object. The article’s title however, at least in my opinion, implies something along the lines as we see in capacitive displays, mainly a touchpad.

Interesting tech nonetheless! Especially the plant example seems interesting, as it implies that interactions can also occur on less conventional surfaces.


While genetic research has huge potential in early diagnoses, and possible prevention, of illnesses caused by genetic defects, the statement that one can determine (general) intelligence of a potential offspring by checking embryos seems nonsensical from the get go.

First of all would be the definition of (general) intelligence. What exactly is it? Even when assuming that an IQ test cannot be cheated, the concept of reflecting one’s general problem solving skills by a number makes little sense. Can we really say that a savant that heavily struggles with everything but in one field has the same intelligence as someone that is completely standard in any way when both have the same IQ score? I would say not, as the former would need much more support than the latter.

Furthermore, often points concerning something related to eugenics ignore the nature vs nurture debate. How much of our skills are dependent on our environment? To what extent can we say that our minds have a limit on how intelligent we are? It’s hard to say, as there isn’t much research about it, and experiments on that topic are often inhumane, historically speaking. So we need to keep this lack of knowledge in mind when talking about topics like eugenics.


Alternatively tgey could use the Rimworld model: release DLCs that heavily change how you play the game, allowing you to tailor the game to your wants and needs that way.


Ignoring the shady practices of Brave Software, this doesn’t really solve the problem. Sites will still use way too much scripting to be flashy, and that will continue to be a problem for everyone, because some of these sites willbe needed for some and will require all scripts to function properly.

What might help more in the long run is complain to the site owners that their site, despite you having an up to date browser, does not work on your phone. Sure, some of those complaints will fall on deaf ears, but even some changing means progress.


Generally, they offer a giant infrastruture that no other game selling platform offers:

  • cloud saving
  • community hub for sharing user content
  • inbuilt forum
  • mod database
  • better shop visibility through intelligent algorithms
  • community events like NEXT fest

overall, you get what you pay for.


AFAIK, the only publicly available build is an outdated image based on debian instead of arch and not really worth running due to its state.


You could also do the Overwatch thing and shut down the servers of the previous game so people either have to accept the new game or leave. Solves the problem in the eyes of the executives.

One thing I would say justifies a new game is when you want to resolve a problem that’s ingrained in the existing content, making these changes fight with the majority of the game. A new iteration, a clean slate, can help with that a lot.


This sounds more like more of a holdout shooter in the vein of COD Zombies and KF than more objective-based shooters like L4D (and Payday and Deep Rock Galactic, to name some other games in that category).

I find it annoying when outlets try to compare anything horde shooter based with L4D. It harms the game they are talking about, since these games can’t compete with the more quiet yet tense moments and their fallout L4D offers due to their design.