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Cake day: Jun 09, 2023

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If you’re trying to say that a recording of a video game is not considered fair use under copyright law, then I give you the existence of Youtube and Twitch as counter evidence.

So, funny you should say that…

This happened to Persona 5. Atlus felt that they had a legal basis to make copyright claims on the game - in their case, circumstantially around spoilers (I guess because they wanted people to pay $50 to experience the late-game story)

And they walked back, not because lawyers were dismantling their case, but because of public outcry. That basis of public preference is what has encouraged game studios to be friendly with Twitch / YouTube, not because judges would rubber-stamp any fair use “transformative work” argument. That is also why many games have given explicit notices to say “Content notice: Please feel free to share videos of this game wherever you’d like!” etc - as it is a non-default judgment.

So, as strange as it is to say, most uploaded videos of a game is in some murky legal territory. Obviously, most studios don’t care and even prefer them to be shared for visibility - or took the time to include those notices to make it 100% legal. But when the recording came from an internal build, the game itself is “stolen”, in that the person playing it breached either terms of viewing or terms of employment, and then the person re-uploading it is breaching copyright as they had no permission.

If you want to work it through the other way, permission to upload a work is non-default. You need to provide a basis it’s legal, not a basis it’s illegal. In many cases, it’s “I made this”. For 99.9% of video game content, it’s “the developer is okay with it”.


If something that would normally be copyrightable is leaked, then the only people who have legal rights to that work are still the original owners. Anyone taking/sharing it is breaching copyright.

Different case for something someone recorded/created themselves, ex recording police abuse on their phone.

I know some people have a misguided view of “But you didn’t register copyright, it’s not copyrighted”. That’s the opposite of how it works. Rights are granted at time of creation; copyright is a “granted” right as part of sale/viewing managing how something can be shared.

Otherwise, a photographer that takes a picture of a rare Snipe can have that photo “legally” stolen before they make it to a lawyer.


I tend to use these platforms without feeling I’m “committed”. I’ve abandoned things like Reddit before, and can likely do so again.

But I can see with the organization levels of channels that others are not thinking the same way.


I think every few years I’m reminded this game exists, and go in to try to check it out - and I still have some account issue where my email is in use but it also won’t send a reset code.


Mario!? Who would have thought Nintendo would revive one of their oldest properties?


When that’s characters, I just accept it. Like, “Oh, I guess I don’t get to try out this character? I’ll level up others instead and see how well I can do.”


I’m undoubtedly kind of frustrated about this “proving tariffs right” - but it remains to be shown whether this works. Very likely, even if/when they achieve scale, prices won’t come down for a very long time.

And it skips over the fact that there were so many ways to achieve this end without causing so much harm to so many industries that can’t do the same.


I play a gacha game and have spent $0 on it. But I can imagine that sort of psychological insulation is not quite so common.


So in a lot of ways, it’s just the Asian term for loot box games, something that western games shied away from a bit after the Battlefront 2 controversy and EU attention, which Disney got embroiled in.


Given the tariff position, I’m curious if this will be the first time Nintendo decides to eat the loss on console hardware sales; something usually only other console makers have done.

Perhaps they think Trump will be on his way out. Or they’re eating into their cash reserves to prevent discussion of their consoles from getting political.


That’s the thing though; it has most definitely entered Duke Nukem Forever / No Man’s Sky levels of development hell wherein the result will never be satisfying. The best we can hope for is a Halo Infinite result where it’s “kinda fun” but inevitably comes nowhere near the hype.


My understanding is this has been the price of thousands of gaming communities enacting a “No politics” rule - people want to keep it external.

“This fucking piece of actual trash! He’s using the most broken character this game has ever put out, and trash talking over it like he’s ever fucked a woman. Literally eat a dick. What do you think, chat?…Oh. Holy shit. Sorry, I just saw some stuff about Trump, listen, I’m sorry, but we don’t talk politics here. It can get really toxic.”


Beyond Good and Evil 2.

I’m not even mad that we didn’t get the multiplanetary open world new-tech live-experience cooperative second coming. I’m mad we didn’t even get a simple, short singleplayer experience living off of the charm of the first one.


In future history books: “…But the biggest exodus from the United States was after it was announced the Switch 2 would cost $1000 exclusively there.”



Its supporters claim that in some ways it’s meant to make development easier; that it simplifies many lighting tricks devs handle manually.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a strong enough point since it’s often throwing hardware at a creativity/effort problem.


“We are also pleased to announce that, next year, we will be adding support for Gamecube games other than Super Smash Bros. Melee.” /s


I regret to be taking no action on this - because I already started my boycott of Xbox back when they fired Tango Gameworks.

You had ONE Game of the Year, all year, Microsoft!

But uh…yeah, funding genocide is also extremely bad.


Although we still number consoles, in a lot of ways we did get our “tiered” console structure.

Take most people’s daily plays, and I’d say about 90% of them or more have an edition available on the prior gen console. And it makes sense when so many of those games have relatively basic graphics - and when game engines have gotten better at scalability.

So, those consoles are neatly serving as a low budget option for a lot of gamers that can’t follow all the latest and most expensive games. Yes, some newer releases will be fully excluded; but even then, getting a brand new or used Switch or PS4 can introduce someone to a huge number of games if they haven’t been exploring options.


I think your voice could actually be better than your wallet on this.

For one, these games are free. So, are you harming the world by playing them and just not buying loot boxes? Minimally, at best. I also advise people enacting boycotts to represent vocal action around them. For instance, I called Target directly about my boycott when they ended DEI hiring.

You can also help lobby politicians to make clear how you feel on the issue. That can put a lot more panic on publishers. Politicians don’t have a strong reason to defend them - often it only gets ignored because they don’t think voters find it a significant issue. Even if you don’t get a federal ban, sometimes you can get state laws like limiting physical advertising; which can also sometimes spread to other states.

Basically, boycotting as a form of inaction, especially when it makes your days boring, isn’t necessarily an effective approach.


You misunderstand the relation of minimum wage to game prices. Video games, compared to other things like theatre, cool cars, fancy restaurants, are relatively cheap and high-longevity entertainment to be consumed at all income brackets; even if that means a single mom buying a used PS4, and one 140-hour Assassin’s Creed game a year for her son.

So raising the price in a country with such a HUGE low-income population can price out far more people than you realize. Even if inflation has grown, the budget has not changed for many of these people. It’s a broken financial system, yes, but that’s the situation.


I agree that, on paper, that is a reason for game prices to go up. However, I also think that on paper, there are reasons for it to go down at the same time.

For one, game budgets really should be controlled. A great many indie developers have put out superior products using the better technologies available. This often coincides with longer development time using a smaller team. You even see a disjointedness in AAA games now where it very much feels like 8 teams lumping their portions together.

Two, minimum wage has not gone up in the USA; and the reach of these games has expanded to many countries that (in part due to import laws) can’t even pay what were considered normal prices elsewhere. Many of these games they’re selling only hit viral growth when a lot of people are playing and talking about them, and we’re in real danger of big, expensive productions being completely out of people’s reach and thus dropping entirely off the radar.



This whole thing has erupted on my radar in the past month ever since they abducted the girl from Tufts.

HOW does this genocidal state have such an insane stranglehold on our country?

Now I’m getting YouTube ads to demonize Hamas; apparently their effort to “pull people back” and get people sympathetic for October 7 hostages. I AM sympathetic to the hostages!…So why is Israel bombing them??


Between trains and large ships, I love the feeling of operating large vehicles with multiple rooms. Bonus points if one large vehicle can carry a smaller vehicle.

Examples: Sea of Thieves, Subnautica, many JRPGs with airships, even something like The Last Express.


I know of that site, but in many ways I can’t stomach following trial-and-error debugging steps to try to get a perfect experience. Very rarely has it been one command line option and then the game runs as perfectly as Windows.


I mean, if they find actual artwork, audio, or code stolen, much of which goes into UI development, that would definitely make for a fair case. I’d presume that Schedule 1 devs would never do something so stupid though.


The game pricing argument goes back and forth for me. Yes, on paper, you could say that inflation suggests games should go up in price, especially considering how many more developers are needed to put out high-fidelity games. BUT, on the other hand, the minimum wage has not raised significantly in all of that time. As a result, a significant number of gamers genuinely can’t pay more for games than they could 20+ years ago. The reason these larger studios exist is because of gaming’s expanded reach in that time; and many of these new target territories similarly can’t pay for the equivalent of $80USD.

There’s maybe only about 1-2 games I’ve ever even paid the $70 price tag for.


How will those old joycons charge? Is the Switch 2 able to have S1 joycons slide in without using the magnet?


120 and 4K are often claimed on console specs but are rarely achieved within games. At best it will be capable of that when playing Netflix or streaming.


I’m curious what other people’s main gripe is (likely emulation fights?) For my own, it’s when they enacted an assault on Garry’s Mod assets.

That domain never did anything to harm their brand and was a source for tons of fan content. Emulation has its murky arguments about capitalism, but going after GMod was just litigation and harm for its own sake.


Ugh. I suppose I can only feel grateful that Tencent’s stake is only in this subsidiary? I’ve already done as much as I can to divorce from Epic Games from Tencent’s 40% stake in them.



I would be doing the same, but I decided to drop off fascist Twitch - just YouTube streams, and whoever cross-streams to Noice for me. (And, the latter doesn’t have ads!)


“Why did you put transgender people in this thing? Why did you make it divisive?”
“Wait. Walk that back. Why do you think that adding transgender people makes something divisive?”

The bigotry is hidden in the questions, but they’re not hiding so successfully anymore.


This might be a dumb idea, but I may buy this game just to make up for all the baseless hate it’s been hit by. Maybe just to avoid shareholder claims of “See, people prefer historical accuracy. Hence black people are banned in all future games.”

I haven’t really even tracked much of Ubisoft games for a while, and I recognize usually they’re pretty mindless open world fun - personally I’m often fine with that.


Wow, you mean they didn’t make a successful game and then immediately triple their staff and try to start pumping out formulaic games at double pace?

But what about company growth??


I’ve even wanted to bring up Valve in some recent political discussions on corporate governance. With the blatant exception of CSGO child-focused gambling, it is otherwise the “shining ideal” of a good company: They invented a product that people like and enjoy, maintain it well to please their customers, and pay their employees well without growing excessively or finding ways to cheat customers out of their money.


Common misconception. None of them want war. They want to show up, intimidate people into surrender, and fight no one. They’re dogs barking through a fence that blindly ignore the open gate.

Hence why all the mass firings were by email. Hence why Trump has twice caved to Canada and Mexico on tariffs. Hence why ICE has failed to force either Illinois or Boston to cooperate with their raids.

I understand the reasons people feel they have to be afraid, but miss that all of the fear is on the other foot.

There was a great video where someone dismantled an ultra-aggressive “we’re gonna destroy you liberals” claim video. He basically said “No, I know you’re not going to do that. Because you said it into a camera.”


Those couple weeks were in fighting for their lives against Nazis. In heat of battle, anyone can form a brand new relationship sooner than that.



Team Fortress 2’s storyline has concluded with a 7-year-delayed comic
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Storyline? What kind of lore-addled whackjobs needed a storyline to get invested in two teams of knuckleheads killing each other endlessly in the Nevadan wasteland? Back when I played video games, it was two bleeping and blorping pixels that would gladly use their own guts as a rope to strangle the other. And you were lucky if you got any blorping! Anyway, it ends on a happy note so you may as well enjoy it. Merry Smissmas!
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Name a game game: “…and then it ends with you fighting A GOD.”
Trope or not, gods just end up being a common target for games about heroes escalating in power while fighting increasingly world-destroying consequences. So, for each post, name a game and describe it, with the assumption being that every description automatically ends with the phrase: "...and then it ends with you fighting a god."
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Stories and Mechanics around punishing over-aggression
For game designers, encouraging aggression is often a good thing. Too many players of StarCraft or even regular combat games end up "turtling", dropping initiative wherever possible to make their games slow and boring while playing as safe as possible. But in other games, often of multiplayer variety, hyper-aggression can sometimes ruin pacing in the other direction. Imagine spawning into a game with dozens of mechanics to learn, but finding that the prevailing strategy of enemy players is to arrive directly into your base and overwhelm you with a large set of abilities, using either their just-large-enough HP pool, or some mitigation ability, while you were still curiously investigating mechanics and working on defenses. Some players find this approach fun, and this may even be the appropriate situation for games of a competitive variety, where the ability to react to unexpectedly aggressive plays is an exciting element for both players and spectators. Plus, this is a very necessary setup for speedrunners, who often optimize to find the best way of trivializing singleplayer encounters. But other games have something of a more casual focus, which can give a sour feeling when trying to bring people into the experience without having to reflexively react to players that are abandoning caution. Even when a game isn't casual, aggression metas can trivialize the "ebb and flow, attack and defense" mechanics that the game traditionally tries to teach. This can also lead to speedruns becoming less interesting because one mechanic allows a player to skip much of what makes a game enjoyable (which can sometimes be solved by "No XGlitch%" run categories) So, the prompt branches into a few questions: - What are fun occasions you've seen where players got *absolutely destroyed* for relying on various "rush metas" in certain kinds of games, because witty players knew just how to react? - What are some interesting game mechanics you've seen that don't ruin the fun of the game, but force players to consider other mechanics they'd otherwise just forget about in order to have a "zero HP, max-damage" build? - What are some games you know of that are currently ruined by "Aggression metas", and what ideas do you have for either players or designers to correct for them?
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Recommendation engine: Downvote any game you’ve heard of before
This might be a slightly unusual attempt at a prompt, but might draw some appealing unusual options. The way it goes: Suggest games, ideally the kind that you believe would have relatively broad appeal. Don't feel bad about downvotes, but do downvote any game that's suggested if *you have heard of it before* (Perhaps, give some special treatment if it was literally your game of the year). This rule is meant to encourage people to post the indie darlings that took some unusual attention and discovery to be aware of and appreciate. If possible, link to the Steam pages for the games in question, so that anyone interested can quickly take a look at screenshots and reviews. And, as a general tip, anything with over 1000 steam reviews probably doesn't belong here. While I'd recommend that you only suggest one game per post, at the very most limit it to three. If I am incorrect about downvotes being inconsequential account-wide, say so and it might be possible to work out a different system.
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Many players have become “patient gamers”. What are games people might miss out on by waiting for sales?
Sales follow the tradition of supply and demand. Products come out at their highest price because of expectations and hype. Then, as interest wanes, the publisher continues to make *some* sales by reducing price to tempt the less interested parties. But this isn't the formula for all games. While we might agree that games from 2000 or even 2010 are "showing their age", at this point 5 to 8-year-old games are less and less likely to be seen as 'too old' by comparison to hot releases. Some publishers have picked up on that theme, and doubled down on the commitment to the idea that their games have high longevity and appeal; making the most of their capitalistic venture for better or worse. I recently was reminded of an indie game I had put on my wishlist several years back, but never ended up buying because it simply had never gone on sale - but looking at it now, not only did it maintain extremely positive user reviews, I also saw that its lowest all-time price was barely a few dollars off of its original price. In the AAA space, the easiest place to see this happening is with Nintendo. Anyone hoping to buy an old Legend of Zelda game for cheap will often be disappointed - the company is so insistent on its quality, they pretty much never give price reductions. And, with some occasional exceptions, their claims tend to be proven right. In the indie space, the most prominent example of this practice is **Factorio**, a popular factory-building game that has continued receiving updates, and has even had its base price *increased* from its original (complete with a warning announcement, encouraging people to purchase at its lower price while it's still available). Developers deserve to make a buck, and personally I can't say I've ever seen this practice negatively. Continuing to charge $25 for a good game, years after it came out, speaks to confidence in a product (even if most of us are annoyed at AAA games now costing $70). I sort of came to this realization from doing some accounting to find that I'd likely spent over $100 a year on game "bundles" that usually contain trashy games I'm liable to spend less than a few hours in. For those without any discussion comments, what games on Steam or elsewhere have you enjoyed that you've never seen get the free advertising of a "40% off sale"?
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Game genres where “It’s just more X content” is more than enough
We get a lot of sequels in the gaming world, and a common criticism is when a series isn't really innovating enough. We're given an open world game that takes 40 hours, with DLC stretching it out 20 more, and see a sequel releasing that cut out it's late 30 hours because players were already getting bored. Meanwhile, there's some other types of games where any addition in the form of "It's just more levels in the series" is perfectly satisfying. Often, this is a hard measure to replicate since these types of series often demand the creators are very inventive and detailed with their content - this likely wouldn't be a matter of rearranging tiles in a level editor to present a very slightly different situation. What I've often seen is that such games will add incredibly small, insignificant "New Gameplay Features" just so they have something to put on the back of the box, but that tend to be easily forgotten in standard play (yet, the game as a whole still ends up being fun). The specific series that come to mind for me with "Level-driven games" are: *Hitman* - the way the levels are made naturally necessitates some creativity both from the level makers to come up with unique foibles and weaknesses to each target, and from the players to discover both the intended and unintended methods of elimination. *Ace Attorney* - While they series has come up with various magical/unusual methods for pointing out contradictions in court, the appeal is still in the mysteries themselves, and it's never needed much beyond the basic gameplay, and the incredibly detailed and well-animated characters to hook people in. *Half-Life* - For its time, anyway. While its Episodes certainly made efforts to present new features, quite often the star of Half-Life games isn't really in any core features or gameplay mechanics, but in the inventive designs of its levels, tied in with a penchant for environmental storytelling; making you feel the world was more than an arrangement of blocks and paths. For a long time, the wait for Valve-made episodes was alleviated with modder-made levels hoping to approach the inventive qualities of the original games. *Yakuza* - While the series has undergone a major overhaul moving to JRPG combat mode, for 6+ games it satisfied a simple formula: Dramatic stories driven by cutscenes, as well as a huge variety of mini quests, of boundless variety and very low logic. For many of their games, they weren't doing a whole lot to re-contextualize their core gameplay, being fisticuffs combat, and it still worked out well (plus, they're continuing to go that route for games like Kiryu's last game) To open up discussion, and put the question as simply as I can: Which games do you follow, that you wish could be eternally supported by their devs, by simply continuing to release new "level packs" or their functional equivalent, with no need to revamp gameplay formulas?
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