Your comment through me for a loop, initially I was thinking that due to changing baskets for calculating CPI/inflation that would account for wages, but that’s really just cost for basic goods shifting. So I looked it up and found out there is the ECI (Employment Cost Index) which is tracking “inflation” for labor.

This site has the chart of CPI vs ECI and, not too surprisingly, they move mostly in unison. The chart does diverge from what I would expect (costs out pacing wages), but haven’t had enough time to read into it.

https://www.bls.gov/blog/2023/more-ways-to-look-at-wages-and-inflation.htm

Yeah, I was surprised given the success that they didn’t even spit out something to keep people engaged with the game. Seemed like even a small content update or doc would have pulled people in.

Hopefully it just means the follow-up will be even better.

They’re still moving forward with the sequel (at least according to the article), so if I had to guess they figured they missed the boat with the expansion and want to focus on the sequel instead.

It’s a really fun game and feels more pikmin meets banjo kazooie (as its got a bit of collectathon element to it).

Its mostly broken down into a number of set sandbox levels where there is a lot of vertical traversal. More of the map opens up as you collect the tinykin. The platforming is pretty smooth and there are a number of fun ways to traverse the maps.

Haha, well dread Delusion probably has a lower polygon count (sorta ps1 like graphics), but yeah every hit lands stats just impact damage/stamina.

Dread Delusion is the one they mentioned and I really enjoyed it. It’s definitely a more constrained game than morrowind (a few weapon types/spells/smaller map/etc.) however I didn’t find it that limiting. Finishing most of the quests won’t feel like a slog, but there won’t be a lot to do after finishing up the main quest.

What really makes the game is the asthetic and world building. Most side quests feel meaningful and you stumble upon them naturally through exploration and progressing the main quest.

The leveling mechanic doesn’t really lock you out of any specific skillset, and items and consumables enable you to upskill when needed.

The only real let down for me was the ending. It was a bit anti-climatic. Like a lot of these games its basically a slides how at the end on how your actions impacted the world.

How does it compare to the first? I don’t know why, but the first one didn’t really click with me. I think the CO being on the field made it feel too fire emblem rather than advance wars.

Plus the move away from pixel graphics really hurt the asthetic, but I think they knew without doing something graphically that people wouldn’t fork over $60.

I mean, it’s a prototype. Its a pretty cool concept in my opinion.

Haha, it is very similar, but I think robotron is a twin-stick shooter since you control movement and the shooting.

Its one of my favorite games though, my grandfather had the actual arcade cabinet.

I definitely read that as Turok Tutu

I think those are both valid picks. If you can only pick one game it’s going to have to be one that changed how the world looked at video games.

I think naming a single game is hard, but most influencial franchise in gaming would have to be Mario. Between the platformers, smash, kart and the music it is just so widely recognizable.

Skyrim

I didn’t play it when it came out, but playing it years later it fits the classic B game of the 2000s. Some alien or high tech gone wrong, with some attempts at an edgy meaningful plot and a twist villian trying to take over the world.

Haha, dark void is one of those games I was really interested in when it first came out and have had on my backlog for years, yet have never heard a good thing about it.

It already exists, but the sands of time Metroidvania “Lost Crowns” was surprisingly good.

People dying at the start of a zombie apocalypse is standard fair at this point. Finding someone in a post apocalyptic world based only on their name years later in a world where everyone is just barely surviving was a bit ridiculous.

It felt a bit like the inverse of Game of Thrones (where it felt like anyone could die), the second part decided this person must die.

I just couldn’t get into part 2 and dropped it after the Joel scene. It just felt so over the top in trying to be depressing and I didn’t feel like slogging through a game that would twist the narrative just for the shock value.

Part one had moments of “everything that can go wrong will go wrong”, but part 2 felt like it jumped the shark (which felt more validated after reading the synopsis online).

I have a console and still play most games on the steamdeck. A lot is portability, but other times it’s what games are on PC vs Consoles.

I think the steamdeck is either sold at cost or at a loss too. Based on This article and others like it, Gaben says the price is a bit “painful” for valve.

Yeah, what’s nice is he does tweak the levels a little bit too to make it feel more like the original (even though it’s in 3D). Like some enemies follow you, or bullet bills appearing from the clouds below (to avoid adding new cannons).

At the end you really start to understand how differently you need to approach 2D vs 3D platform design.

True but if I own the .exe or physical disk, it’s going to be a lot harder to stop me playing the game than if I’m accessing it through a platform.

Yeah, that’s the point I and the person above were stating.

I’ll have to check this out.

Also, can’t help but callout another wholesome Gator game - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586800/Lil_Gator_Game/

I’m not sure how good a source it is, but Wikipedia says it was multimodal and came out about two years ago - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-4. That being said.

The comparisons though are comparing the LLM benchmarks against gpt4o, so maybe a valid arguement for the LLM capabilites.

However, I think a lot of the more recent models are pursing architectures with the ability to act on their own like Claude’s computer use - https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/computer-use, which DeepSeek R1 is not attempting.

Edit: and I think the real money will be in the more complex models focused on workflows automation.

My main point is that gpt4o and other models it’s being compared to are multimodal, R1 is only a LLM from what I can find.

Something trained on audio/pictures/videos/text is probably going to cost more than just text.

But maybe I’m missing something.

My understanding is it’s just an LLM (not multimodal) and the train time/cost looks the same for most of these.

• DeepSeek ~$6million https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/26/deepseek_r1_ai_cot/?td=rt-3a
• Llama 2 estimated ~$4-5 million https://www.visualcapitalist.com/training-costs-of-ai-models-over-time/

I feel like the world’s gone crazy, but OpenAI (and others) is pursing more complex model designs with multimodal. Those are going to be more expensive due to image/video/audio processing. Unless I’m missing something that would probably account for the cost difference in current vs previous iterations.

You are right - https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_Steam.

My main arguement though was that it’s not like your steam library is yours without restrictions. You’re agreeing to Steams terms and services and there are lots of ways they can prevent you from playing (most) games you “own”.

I don’t get the downvotes. You’re right, everything you “own” in steam is through a license. People just don’t like to admit that we’re willing to let that one slide for convenience.

Yeah, I hates it at first, but after playing a level or two it clicked. I’m not sure it’s better than 2016, but it did find it’s own rhythm.

The only thing I hated was the one miniboss like enemy that basically required you use a specific gun to beat.

Having bought and beaten the game by this point, I stand by my previous comment. Canadians should not buy this game!

Oh, my bad. It looks like a really short game so wouldn’t be surprised if people had an issue with the price, but yeah what can you even get anymore for $2.50.

I think its reasonable. A couple of bucks for probably an hour or so of game isn’t too bad.

But anything over $3 and it’s starting to push it.

Honestly this could all be a campaign from Rockstar to get ahead of higher pricing. They throw out $100 to some random people and let them run with it, so when they announce a $80/$90 price tag everyone bregurdingly goes along with it.

Hmm, I may be reading it wrong, but it’s just talking about the distribution/updating of foreign controlled applications. Based on what I’ve seen Marvel Snap isnt controlled by them, they just provide services for the application, so it wouldn’t technically apply. However, I’m not a lawyer and may have the wrong read on the app, but given the game developers were surprised I’d think that’s the right read.

I feel like bytedance is doing this on purpose to rule people up, as these kinds of services weren’t explicity called out.

It may backfire though. I don’t think most Americans know how much is influenced/owned by Chinese companies.

That’s a good catch!

You are right that it is more of just a spec bump, but given the warning that not all switch games may be compatible, I think the controllers are going to have different sensors (some have speculated a more mouse-like feature).

I’ve had every Nintendo console since the gbc and suspect I’ll eventually get this too, but they’ve got an uphill battle vs the steamdeck for me. Really going to depend on the first party games.