To me, it’s about the voice and avatar on screen and not the content. They never fully match (I am super sensitive to sync between audio and video) which just puts it into super creepy and inhuman on top of the weird (to me, anyway,) animated avatar (and I don’t just mean Japanese-anime-style either; I’ve seen robots, more photo-realistic, etc.).

Ick; definitely do not want this (vtubers are super uncanny valley to me and unnerving)

defenders of freedom?

We’re going through a bit of a far-right thing at the moment, so you may want to hold off on that assessment.

I literally cannot remember the last time. This PC doesn’t have any optical drives and I’ve had it for like 7 years now. I did use a USB optical drive once to install a driver for something. I can’t even remember the last game I purchased that had a physical disc, honestly. I haven’t bought a game requiring a disc since living in Japan so that’s definitely a decade. Probably around 15 years, if I had to guess, and maybe even longer than that.

I was thinking the gym + meditation/isolation. Expensive and time-consuming? Yes. Does my perceived reasoning for it make sense (gym + mental space)? Also yes.

I don’t know that it is the primary factor, honestly. Jobs keep moving to places like Tokyo where daycare has a lottery system and is super expensive if one doesn’t get into the free one. Add to that that, since corona and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices for a lot of things have gone up leading to a cost of living crisis. for many as wages stay stagnant.

Indeed, there was an election yesterday and these were some things that were being mentioned by politicians in the lead-up. In Tokyo, it looks like they are trying to make daycare and school tuition free, which would be a big help. Several schools have even had trouble properly providing meals lately because of the sudden rising costs of food (fees for school are paid at the beginning of the school year so schools have to budget for higher prices and will have worse meals at the beginning to avoid having money for none at the end). Even the far-right anti-foreigner party ran on some kind of payments for kids. Another party talked about getting things less centralized in Tokyo and trying to spread the population out or at least support hose that remain in the countryside.

As for why it wasn’t faster, rules have been on the books forever, but people and culture make it different. People feel huge pressure not to make waves so they will clock out and continue working. The more recent legislation has actually addressed this and put some responsibility on the worker themself in my understand, which may help. Corona also showed people what could be and many were angry when forced to go back to the old status quo (and one can see comments about people’s manners and patience on the train and other places getting worse in the time since). There’s also what is called “power harassment” and the like and lots of old, entitled fuckheads in positions of power at companies who think they are untouchable and, thankfully, are slowly going away.

Worker protections and their enforcement have improved in recent years, but things still aren’t fully there yet. That said, the whole karoshi thing is getting less and less, which is good. The problem now is less in the big corps and more in the smaller businesses since they end up having less oversight. My company even requires I record hours at my other job (my own company) and submit them to make sure they and I are not in violation of labor law for hours worked.

I wish AMD had something like CUDA that my video rendering software used so I could stop using nvidia.

I’m on a 2080 or 2090 (I forget which). I thought I’d upgrade to the 40xx now that 5090s are out. I looked at the prices and absolutely not. The 5090s are around 500k JPY, and ordering from the US would work out to about the same with exchange, tax, and any possible tariff that exists this week. Salaries here are also much lower than in the west as well on average even for those of us in software.

4070s are still around 100k which is cheaper than last time I looked at 250k ish.

Price aggregator site in Japan if you want to play around: https://kakaku.com/pc/videocard/itemlist.aspx?pdf_Spec103=500 On the left, you’ll see the cards to select and the prices are obvious on the screen.

I didn’t take it to mean that the AI was exclusively trained on their own images, but good on them if they are.

mine is 5m, 1h, 2h, 1d, 4w, custom on gcal on a pixel. It might be based on commonly-chosen ones to some degree, but I rarely, if ever, have selected 5m so I’m not sure.

The AI used was likely trained on sets of data without the consent nor compensation of the people whose works were used.

Counterpoint for the general case: games also have a much larger playerbase these days and manufacturing of cartridges and components can be done at much greater economies of scale. In many cases, there is no physical media manufacturing cost to a lot of the sales.

For the specific point: Gearbox/Take2 have lost all faith from me so, while I don’t generally mind some games being in that price range, there’s zero chance pitchford and his ilk are getting that from me.

Souslikes, yes. For metroidvania, I would disagree. You did not mention soulslike in your post, unless I’m blind, or else I would have said nothing.

New metroidvania

Hey, hi everyone. We here at IronRaven decided to make a metroidvania, in the style of Dieselpunk and the 20s, art deco, art nouveau and so on. Tell me, what is the most important thing for you in metroidvanias, besides their appearance?

literally ruin part of society

Not being able to steal something someone put a ton of time and/or money into for a couple of years without compensating them at all is ruining society… how exactly?

open source doesn’t pay my mortgage, pay back any business loans, put food on my table, etc. as the sole breadwinner in my family.

To be clear, I have contributed in a minor degree to open source and build things for fun; this is specifically about why copyright exists in certain domains. I also think it should be something more like 3-5 years max. I am a software engineer and used to work in the games industry for a number of years (though not anymore).

If I spend millions of my own money and hundreds or thousands of hours of my own time to build something, another company should not just be able to yoink that, put a coat of paint on it, and leave me with nothing to show if theirs just happens to get more popular or be advertised a little better. I don’t think the current laws are good but, absent basic income and such for everyone, I see why something should exist.

I’ve seen no evidence of this. People are clamoring for the switch 2 and talking about all they want to buy. Fuck Nintendo, but people keep giving them money so they’re going to keep doing anti-consumer shit with no sign of any government stopping them. The government isn’t going to attack one of the most beloved companies in Japan whose mascot they used at their olympics. A lot of Japanese are event against things like free, labour-of-love randomizers made for old games. People need to stop buying their shit globally if they want anything to happen.

Aside from the obvious things mentioned about flow, maps, immersion, etc., and to address some of the other things I’ve seen in the comments: configurability. Realize that not everyone will have the same physical abilities, skill, and/or time to play. Give options to people who want to tweak things to be more difficult and likewise for those who want it easier and more accessible.

Then it would be a game I never touch; when there’s no other way to learn than by dying, your game has failed in my opinion. I shouldn’t have to beat my head against some pattern that I can’t discover through lore or elsewhere in the game. I’m in my 40s and used to game competitively in the early 2000s, FWIW.

I never completed Breath of the Wild in large part due to getting something cool and just having it be worthless and broken soon after. I also tend to have very little time to devote to gaming so it just felt like a waste to have to stop, go hunt down something better than randomStickLevel3, and go back to do something again.

If I wanna hoard things or risk a lot to get something cool/strong early, that’s my decision; why do you get to dictate how I play a game? Especially true when some people may not have the same physical ability as you and need to make certain situations play out differently.

Not particularly, but I’ve played maybe 40 minutes of pokemon in my life total so my opinion probably shouldn’t count.

More zelda like aLttP, though…

Not just unionizing, but getting legislation put forward and passed that protects workers’ rights.

In Japan, the barrier to firing workers is much higher than in many other places. Even layoffs for financial reasons are tough and can be challenged. This is one reason companies sit on hordes of cash here is to weather financial issues, but it also has negative economic impacts as well. That said, Nintendo are a bunch of greedy cunts IMO, and I try never to buy anything new from them anymore (just buying used where they don’t get a cut).

Nah. I’d rather they make something with the size, scale, mechanics (referring for combat and such but not same abilities, etc.), and storytelling of FFVI. Optionally some fancier graphics and preferably no grinding anywhere.

You still have to declare things in customs. If you don’t and get caught, you could end up far worse than high prices.

I don’t use it at all, even with various bank apps and such yelling at me to do so. Yeah, a $2 wrench could still eventually get it out of me, but you can’t just use my face/finger to do so.

I’ve used firefox on android for years now. The only time I do anything in Chrome is when I need to translate pages easily (Japanese translation only recently hit desktop version and it’s very poor quality and google lens is inconvenient).

So, in Japan, this has a couple of functions, but one major one. By keeping salaries low and offering bonuses, employees can basically be only compensated the bare minimum in the case they (a) are no longer wanted (since firing is very hard here), (b) not performing as well as expected for whatever reason, or © the company did particularly poorly.

As mentioned, it ties into one of the levers they have to pull for under-performing or bad-fit employees they might want to get rid of in a country where workers have a fair bit of rights on that front.

On the other, it does make some applications/calculations a little weird as some home loans etc. have repayments that expect those bonus payments (either a higher amount twice-yearly or two extra payments per year). Most companies in Japan pay monthly (and most of those on the 25th or closest preceding business day).

The steam reviews put me off a bit (and my PC these days barely meets the min spec) as a few mention stealth being broken somehow and that’s typically how I like to play. Definitely keeping my eye on it, though.

Nope! I don’t think I ever played it.

This is really hard. Dungeon Master on the Amiga500 is up there, as is Unlimited Adventures. Today, these don’t look so interesting, but man they were great at the time. Amiga also had a neat RPG maker as well whose name I can’t recall.

Prices here in Japan are ridiculous on all graphics cards. They’re still fairly niche for people into gaming, certain creative pursuits, and, I suppose, crypto. They’re also in short supply so they go to a lottery system in many sellers and to scalpers at the rest. Even then, the price can be what feels like spending double or triple that. I have a 20xx (2080, I think)? and I just don’t see myself upgrading anytime at all soon. It used to be that it was cheaper to use something like NewEgg (who have their own problems, apparently), but as the JPY and USD went further apart, that stopped being worth it. Sorry, makers of new games, I can’t afford to buy a PC good enough to buy your games.

Yup. This is how I treat exclusives.

I was excited, but it’s a pass from me. No reputation, no freedom on whom to fight, little ability to customize my character from what I’ve seen… no thanks.

Duke3d might be a next logical step in terms of probability of running on all kinds of random crap without being too big or resource intensive.

When I was a teen and got Blood 2, I was already interested in game development (I was thinking of DigiPen with hopes of working for Nintendo, but that didn’t work out financially). I emailed them if I could take a tour to see a game studio since I was interested in it as my career. I got a reply from them (someone named Bob, I think? I don’t have access to that email anymore), and they thanked me for my interest but politely let me down citing secrets and proprietary stuff.

I just looked at their website and I think Blood 2 was the only game I played on their engines. Maybe a demo of FEAR at some point, but I don’t think so.

There are plenty of countries with better worker rights in which to set up shop as well.

Gamestop was a much-lampooned company with awful practices and many a horror story from employees and customers alike. I found it gross that the internet would rally behind such a company and never understood the whole thing (aside from the people with neither shame nor ethics wanting to make a buck).

Fuck take two, fuck gearbox, fuck pitchford, and fuck borderlands; that series should’ve stopped once pre-sequal and BL2 were out.