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Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.
If you enjoy the game you should check out The Traitors with its many international variants. I was surprised to read that the productions provide psychologists to help the contestants as it gets traumatic, but when I watched the first UK season there were a lot of people getting into emotional distress.
There have been a lot of people cast who really shouldn’t be on the show; it’s just a game!
Not too much earlier; Wikipedia says the game was invented in 1986 by psychology student Dimitry Davidoff, a psychology student at Moscow State University.
I started working in local TV news 17 years ago. I figured out pretty quickly there’s enough actual news happening to fill the 24-hour cable channels, but sending out reporters and photographers (maybe even producers) is expensive. It’s much cheaper to just have somebody in the studio blabbering on about a few things and trying to stoke reactions from the audience. It can even build a bigger audience than actual news.
Sports radio and TV is an even bigger (though less damaging) example of this. They have a lot of time to fill when games aren’t on, and a lot of times they just put someone on who will give the dumbest take possible just to get the audience mad and have an argument with someone else in the studio or even let the audience call in to argue.
I always enjoyed the Portal 2 trailers with Cave Johnson
I think your last point also applies to Valve. Limiting the number of models simplifies things for Valve; effectively they only have two models to support right now between the LCD and OLED models. From a software perspective I assume they’re extremely similar except at a very low level, mainly with the display panel difference. From a hardware perspective that’s only 2 main SKU families (looks like maybe 6 total with 3 of each?) and still probably a lot of parts overlap except with the panel and I’d assume two variants of the mainboard to accommodate different connections for each panel. Even making the OLED variants complicated things I’m sure, but it should be manageable.
We learned within the past year that Valve is still an astonishingly small company compared to how much revenue it has; I think they were only around 450 employees. That’s pretty doable with software, but dealing with hardware starts to force that level up and would start cutting into the incredible profitability per employee that they’re accustomed to.
Of course they’ve made plays in the hardware space before, but I don’t think anything’s been near the volume the Steam Deck has. Even assuming that they’re outsourcing the manufacturing, and maybe fulfillment, and maybe even warranty repairs, that still means they need employees to manage and support those programs. They need employees trained to support those products. They need to store spare parts and plan to have enough to legal requirements beyond the final sale date. They need to test software updates against every hardware variant prior to release for as long as the product is supported. Keeping the number of SKUs small makes the rest of that manageable and hopefully keeps profitability high and quality of service good. If they start adding too many SKUs then they need more employees, giving lower profitability and they start cutting quality and service until we end up with the bad products and support we see from so many big PC companies.
It seems like they’re working towards opening Steam OS up where other companies can make their own devices. Let other companies handle the incremental updates and making the software work with their hardware. Let Valve keep focusing on just making a few things but making them really good.
I see a lot of people use https://catbox.moe/ for basic videos. You could also find a peertube instance
GOG is pretty good because of this. I check in there if I’m considering buying something on Steam. There might still be compelling reasons to buy on Steam, like I bought Parkitect on Steam because a review on GOG specifically called out how the mods really only work well on Steam, but I’m at least checking first and maybe Wishlisting the game on GOG. I have fairly reasonable trust in Valve while Gabe is running it, but I feel like I can have longer trust in keeping copies of installers myself.
I think in the US I’ve heard ETF/ACH transaction fees are usually around $2.50? It might be possible to have that apply across a batch, though, as in if you submit 10 payments to 10 different people as a single transaction it’s still just $2.50, or 25¢ per person. I’m only getting this from hearing accountants complain at companies I’ve worked with, so I don’t understand the details. But I’ve seen it pretty common with companies doing payouts to want to see a minimum amount before they actually send the payment, otherwise it’s not worth doing.
Yeah, I feel like I trust Steam as long as Gabe is calling the shots at Valve. I’m sure it helps that they’re a private company. Hopefully whoever takes over after him will have learned the lesson that you can make a nearly unimaginable amount of money in this industry without putting the screws to the consumer. If they were public or let the business “experts” in I’m sure there would be all sorts of moves to extract more money from customers that would end my trust, but I feel like overall I have a couple of decades of experience at this point that Valve isn’t actively trying to hurt me.
More broadly about companies not producing things but extracting “rent” from others by controlling a marketplace all others have to go through. The former economist in residence is promoting a new book he wrote, which I suppose I would have to read to fully understand his argument. The little bit I read in the article has not exactly convinced me, but more from the part that other companies he mentions like Apple and Amazon also produce products.
I have bought it twice, possibly on sale both times but still. I’d never heard of it, and I’d never played any style of game like that, but Nintendo advertised it to me when it launched on the Switch and I eventually bought it. Later my family started taking the Switch more and I eventually bought it again in Steam. No regrets! Happy to support good games from small developers that don’t break the bank!
Yeah, I’ve played plenty of Civilization over the years, but I’m married now. I have a kid. I keep a note with what I’m doing because it might be a couple months before I play again. I could play more, but I want to spend time with my wife and my kid. Usually when I take time to play I want to play again the next night, but that’s often not feasible, and then it turns into weeks again.
I don’t see it mentioned often, but basically my favorite has been the GameCube controller. Massive primary button with the secondary button the same shape but smaller and next to it, with the alternate (X/Y) buttons a different shape that flow around the primary, all in easy reach but all different to the touch. Especially when I’m playing the Xbox or Switch for a while and then switch to playing the other I’m messed up on the controllers for a little while since Nintendo and Microsoft swap the A and B buttons but both keep A as the primary button (I think a legacy of the original NES/Famicom putting the A button closer to the right hand and the B button farther in, to the left of the A).
I’d prefer the right thumb stick to be the same shape as the left, and it needs a left shoulder button, but beyond that I’d pretty much keep the layout as-is, maybe a slightly different size/shape to better fit in hands. I’ve seen a few third-party controllers like that for the Switch but haven’t looked into them enough to buy one.
I only know of the Atari Lynx from reading about the history of Chip’s Challenge but I’d be interested in seeing that.