Several times I’ve set the max warnings to whatever the current warning count is, and then decreased that over time.

I thought the game was pretty okay. The romance with the detective lady was a little disappointing. The difficulty fell off a cliff pretty early on as a mage with life drain.

The arc with whatstheirface and their mother not accepting them seemed pretty plausible to me. I’ve got a friend going through something like that now. Seeing something like that in media is meaningful to people.

The loyalty mission prompt was kind of meh. I can see that they wanted loyalty missions, but it felt like they struggled to fit them in.

Overall it wasn’t quite the game I wanted, but it wasn’t bad.

I’m reminded of an old job’s database where every key was named “id_foo” instead of “foo_id”

You didn’t have user_id. You had id_user. You didn’t have project_id, you had id_project. Most of the time, anyway. It was weird and no one could remember why it was like that. (Also changes to the DB were kind of just yolo, there wasn’t like a list of migrations or anything)

I feel like how big I want the game to be is a weird quantum unstable value. When I’m interested in the game I want it to keep going. But at some point I lose interest, and I want it to wrap up. But usually I don’t want to skip content that’s at least okay, especially if it affects endings and other choices.

Like I enjoyed Veilguard, but there were bits near the end where I was losing focus and kind of wanted it to pick up the pace. There have been other games where I finished all the side quests but was like “that’s it? I want more”

Not sure how to square this circle. I don’t think procedural generated or AI content is quite up to the task yet.

I do think we’ll see a game that has AI content in the critical path in the next couple years though. You’ll go to camp and talk to Shadowheart, and it’ll try to just make up new dialogue. I don’t know if it’ll be good. There will probably be at some weird ass hallucinations that’ll become memes.

“I don’t like making music so no one else does” I guess is his train of thought

…what do you mean by using dev containers? Are your people doing development on their host machine?

I feel like as games and technology get more complex, the question of “Are we a company that makes an engine or a company that makes a game? Because doing both is hard” becomes more relevant.

I guess they have microsoft money now so they could probably hire a whole team and build a really nice engine to rival unreal, but they probably won’t. They can shovel whatever garbage out the door with “The sequel to skyrim” on it, and it’ll sell.

Also they’re kind of competing with themselves by also making Avowed.

… we should be breaking up these big companies.

Just sitting here with my hands on my face crying and muttering “just delete your facebook/instagram/whatever. just delete it. please. please just stop using the torment nexus”

I’m aware but worth pointing out. It’s easy to forget. Also to forget that our personal experience is not universal.

I had really bad anxiety in my youth. I’d get nauseous. Staying inside alone made it worse. So much worse. Taking the plunge and actually going out, talking to people, engaging, regularly, that lead to progress. Even if it meant throwing up in the bathroom sometimes. But that probably won’t work for everyone.

But I guess some part of me has a visceral reaction that’s just like “you’re making it worse! You’re just hiding from the problem and it’s never going to get better this way! Just go outside and nothing bad will happen, and you’ll stop freaking out eventually!”. But that’s not everyone.

But yes, to your point, a lot of the time it seems like they’re not even trying, and I can’t know their inner world. Sometimes they’re not, sometimes they are.

I don’t think it’s an accurate assessment to say “everyone is doing their best” though because some people certainly are not.

This was a useful perspective for me. Thanks.

No, it’s “I don’t think you’re doing enough to deal with your problems” first.

Because a lot of people I know and see are like “lol I’m a mess” without seeming to do anything to address the situation.

Though that’s aggravated by the capitalist hellscape that makes getting health care difficult.

But also I’m less generous about this because it’s frustrating to be on the receiving end of someone’s crippling anxiety.

And this comic is a cutesy, romanticized if you will, representation of it.

…why though?

Reminds me of a favorite line from a song, “I don’t want you to romanticize falling the fuck apart”

I don’t get it. Are they afraid of possibly having a brief interaction with a neighbor?

On the one hand, I have no interest in this. I already played the game.

On the other, as someone else said, if it makes dudebro duds mad then that might be worthwhile.

It would never even occur to me to eat at fast food (unless you count like the pizza by the slice place on the corner).

I just feel so alienated from everyone else sometimes. Just… The food isn’t good, isn’t good for you, isn’t cheap, isn’t fast. The org isn’t environmentally or politically friendly. Just stop eating there. Be mildly inconvenienced if you have to.

But I guess that will slam right into the constant problem of “someone feels bad and now they’re not going to listen”

Ask them out. “You seem cool. Want to go on a date to see if we click?”. I recommend using the word date explicitly because several of my friends have “gone out for drinks” and then been uncertain if it was a date

On the date, if things are going well, just ask if you can kiss them. Some people have ideas about how you should just go for it but the error rate there is high, and most people prefer consent.

If that goes well, you can ask about what other things they like. The context and mood will be appropriate.

Don’t be a pen pal on the dating apps. Just ask them out.

I don’t think I’ve ever purchased a battle pass and I don’t plan to. I think if a game I was interested in offered one, I’d consider just skipping it.

If no one bought the things they’d stop making them, but that is an impossible idea.

It’s intimate. It signals interest. Often you get to touch other parts of their body, too. Some people are good kissers and have the appropriate amount of forcefulness/submission for each other.

We should break up match group. With hammers, if needed.

But I do think a lot of people self sabotage on the apps. They’ll be like “no one has an interesting conversation with me” but their profile is like 3 bland photos and “I like to have fun”. My guy, you need to give people something to work with.

But also I don’t trust that the app is actually showing profiles to anyone with a reasonable algorithm. They probably could actually show me people I’d be compatible with. They chose not to.

There’s probably some blood on their hands, thinking about it. Lying to people that this app will lead to relationships when they intentionally sabotage that for profit means people are unhappier, more frustrated, and some of them probably go on to do violence. It’s probably producing incels.