Atta girl, Patty! This is what we sent you for.

Not gonna pretend she’s not part of the establishment, but her and Maria Cantwell have been our picks for the Senate for several elections now and with good reason when you look at the alternatives.

Called this a while ago https://urusai.social/@neatchee/112255667073894754

Space Ghost; “Moltar, eject the warp core!”
Moltar: “We don’t have a warp core.”
Space Ghost: “Good work!”

It shouldn’t be that confusing, considering this is literally the challenge lawmakers (honest ones, as rare as they are) face.

There’s a great blog post by Neil Gaiman (despite recent revelations about his misconduct) that talks about “why we must defend icky speech”.

Long story short, the law is a blunt instrument. If you cannot clearly and accurately define the terms being used in the language of the law then you wind up with a law that can be applied beyond the intended scope. Like when you write laws about freedom of religion and then wind up with The Satanic Temple erecting statues of Baphomet in court houses. Or banning the Bible from library because it contains depictions of violence and sexual deviancy or promiscuity

These issues aren’t just academic. They have real-world consequences. Like, there have literally been legal rulings made based on the presence or absence of an Oxford comma

Is that kind of pedantry useful to the average conversation? No, of course not. But there are people trying to make laws that target women, or trans women, and if they can’t accurately define what a woman is then the law can be used to target people they didn’t want targeted.

Which is one of many reasons why trying to target trans folks with legal authority is a fool’s errand

Great scene. Carter dismantling the dummy is very satisfying

I never said anything about the quality of the games. I’m speaking specifically to the monetization bullshit.

As I said elsewhere: budget bloat happens in a lot of places. Greedy executive and publishers is one place. Overambitious design goals that get scrapped is another. There’s also bad tools workflows, mismanagement, and any number of other contributing factors.

But even indie devs are getting screwed on pricing and making far less than they deserve to be in many cases.

If people keep buying CoD and Assassins Creed, devs will keep making them. And if they can’t increase retail price to cover the budget they will find other ways to do it.

I almost replied from my inbox; glad someone said it before I even got to it haha

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the capital structure is fair by any means. I understand all the reasons why people - especially right now - are struggling to justify big purchases.

And I will readily agree that inefficient and improper use of resources is one of the contributing factors to ballooning development budgets

That said, video games are - and I challenge you to disprove this - easily one of the best investments for entertainment. Dollars-per-hour of fun on a 20hr, $60 game is $3. For a live service game where people spend hundreds of thousands of hours playing it can get below $0.10 per hour.

EDIT: I also agree that demos need to make a comeback because I’m sick of wasting money. Though people also need to read some reviews before they buy occasionally :/

While that may be true, the costs and budgets we’re dealing with today are orders of magnitude higher than they were back then. Physical product manufacturing doesn’t even come close to making up the difference when you factor in digital storefront costs.

I simply chose two big, well known, and beloved titles for the sake of expediency.

This problem is not unique to big budget games.

Indie devs are getting screwed too. You saying that you’ve found great games for $30-40 from indie devs isn’t an argument against more sustainable pricing like you think it is.

If the dev budget for the indie game was 5% of the AAA game but the price was 50% then you’ve literally just helped prove my point

The fact is - and I challenge you to prove me wrong here - video games continue to be hands down the best dollar-per-hour investment for entertainment. Even a $60 game that only lasts 20 hrs is still coming in at $3/hr of entertainment, which is very hard to beat. When you look at live service games where people will spend literally thousands of hours after paying anywhere from $60-200 you’re looking at $0.10/hr in some cases.

Fun facts incoming!

Cost of “Mario 64” on release = $59.99

Development budget for Mario 64 = ~$1.56mil

Inflation adjusted Mario 64 cost in 2022 = $111.91

Inflation adjusted Mario 64 budget in 2022 = ~$2.91mil

Cost of “Elden Ring” on release = $59.99

Estimated dev. budget for Elder Ring = $100mil-200mil

Mario 64 units sold = ~12mil

Elder Ring units sold = ~28mil

These details are provided without comment. You do the math and decide whether the fact that prices haven’t changed since 1996 might be the reason for some of the enshitification we continue to see.

And now for the comment:

Consumers are horrifyingly resistant to price increases for games. It is directly responsible for many of the shitty monetization models we’ve seen. Development budget continue to rise, even on indie games, while consumers pay less and less in “real money value” over time.

It’s completely unsustainable and the very reason the “business types” get involved, forcing unpopular monetization schemes

Exactly this. I work in the games industry as well and even big studios are falling over themselves NOT to release anywhere near GTA6.

Nobody believes there won’t be people playing other games at that time. But it’s going to dominate the media cycle for a month, especially if it is either better or worse than fans hope. And the reality is that many, many people have limited gaming budgets. If you’ve only got $100 to spend, GTA6 is very likely to be the default pick at that time.

It’s a behemoth in terms of grabbing attention from both the media and players. All the best laid plans for a successful release can be completely derailed by a game like GTA6.

Lol check my post/comment history and see how fucking wrong you are

Literally caucused for Bernie.

Everyone is so ready to pick up a pitchfork that you fail basic reading comprehension.

I’m literally just trying to think of ways they could have EXECUTED this. I said nothing of the legitimacy, fairness, justice, or legality of the behavior

It is the bread and butter of capitalist fucks to operate just barely within the letter of the law.

This was never apologia and your (and others) penchant for picking a fight is toxic as fuck.

I have no idea. That’s why I was asking 🤷

Is it possible some of these were liquidations or inventory sell-off or something? As a data person my initial assumption would be a few bulk purchases throwing this calculation out of whack

I could see some private dealership figuring out a way to buy the vehicles and resell them as a hard-to-get item later

Edit: down votes for asking a question? Y’all are weird. I’m not even saying it’s not fraud.

Excuse me for literally typing on my phone from a plane and missing a typo. That’s some weak ground you’re standing on

Your reading comprehension apparently sucks. If that’s what you took away from my comments you never bothered to look past the keywords

“Spend more time in the real world”? Fuckin-a that is some pompous, condescending bullshit. You have no idea who the fuck I am or what I’ve experienced.

Done now. You’ve made it incredibly clear exactly what type of person you are

You are shifting the goal posts. My point is simply that the delusion of an armed insurrection against the government is naive in the extreme. It will never play out the way you imply by saying “the crazy Nazis are in charge so don’t give them a monopoly on force”. They already have the monopoly on the only force that matters in any realistic internal conflict scenario.

As for vaccines: your right to be a moron stops at the point where it endangers others. Your right to be an idiot does not supersede my right to life. That is a well understood principal in US law. Are you allowed to skip the vaccine? Sure. But I’m allowed to require you show proof of vaccination before letting you on my private property, including my place of business. And the same goes for public property too. The metal detectors used to keep guns out of government buildings is proof of this reality

The point is that if the total IDF death count in Gaza is that low after more than year of fighting, you and your rifle aren’t gonna do shit against the government if they’re able to convince the military to attack Americans on their own soil.

Like I said, I’m not trying to ban guns outright. If you want to defend your family from other crazy civilians with guns, I can appreciate that.

But this conversation started with a comment about Nazis being in power. You cannot fight that kind of power with the firearms available to civilians. Only other civilians with equally weak armaments

And my original comment was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of reversing course on vaccines when kids start dying when there are thousands of deaths every year, dozens of which are children in schools, and our leadership won’t even consider strengthening background checks or banning bump stocks