I would agree with that. The last micro transaction I purchased was - I kid you not - the WoW celestial steed. I'm not proud of it, but in my defense I didn't know what that would mean.

I have never bought another skin, cosmetic, or piece of gear for real money since. I don't buy battle passes. I bought the base game for Diablo IV and play each season, but the "Shop" is ignored.

What if there is an innovative, engaging game - a nearly original premise, even - that is well executed but just happens to be created using AI tools? The answer? There's no value there because within 24 hours of any inkling of success, the AI clones will hit the market.

I think Indy game development is on life support and headed for the casket. The only real barrier to this new ecosystem is what can only be found in very deep pockets, and the companies who have that are already bleeding out from different but concurrent reasons,

Right when gaming hardware is vanishing over the pricing horizon, the game production industry is throwing up all over itself.

I'm pretty glad that at 56 I no longer care very much. I have my three games I play, and I hope some updates are made, but I'm off the treadmill.

... "at least we aren't like Poland" he says.

I just can't even ... this is how low the right has sunk, we're at Poland now. How's the deficit looking my republican bros? I feel embarrassed for people like Shaitan. I think about y'all every time I fill up my tank, it's a damned shame.

Dude we're literally living through Team America: World Police 2 right now, we fucked up the global economy AGAIN. With some kind of national oil interest in a country who's leader we nabbed in the middle of the night. What the fuck are you talking about, how can you be so tone deaf?

You're confused, he didn't rename AGI to SI, he renamed AI to SI.

Superintelligence already had a meaning, but now the federal government will refer to the whole field of AI as SI. You're reverse engineering Trump's SI to mean the part of the field of AI that the government should be most interested in, because that's the only thing that might make sense, but then the government would use the original meanings of both AI and SI... they're not. When the federal government says SI, they could literally be referring to what the rest of us just call AI now. It doesn't make sense because it doesn't make sense. You can't make it make sense. Trump did it because he thinks Super sounds better, that is all. It's exactly as dumb as it sounds.

I think I understand where you're coming from, you're not American right? So from an outsider POV, yes the situation is bizarre. Like what is this Christian Republican nonsense, their actions don't seem to have any connection to Christianity, WWJD doesn't seem to be a factor in any policy decisions, and surely America is still famously a land of religious freedom, so you see us throwing religious labels around and your gut reaction says that must be wrong, like Jewish Democrat and Christian Republican should be equally irrelevant, right?

Yah you'd think. I wish. They should be totally irrelevant. To be fair I don't think any Jewish Democrats really give a rats ass if we identify them as Jewish or not, it doesn't matter and I don't care, same as Jewish Republicans, and I don't think Christian Democrats give any fucks either. It's the Christian Republicans that are something else man. They've turned religious identity into part of their party platform. So you're not seeing an accusation, you're seeing self identification and this elevation of Christianity to some sort of primacy. Believe me, we're ALL confused how their faith relates to their policy, it doesn't make any more sense from over here, but it's their thing, I'm not making it up. You might be wondering wait he said Jewish Republicans, how the fuck does that work? I think the way that works is sort of a shared authoritarian view of America for Christians and Israel for Jews thing. But IDK, I can't figure out log cabin republicans either and that's a whole thing.

They very loudly self identify that way and explicitly claim their religion has superiority. Of course there are objections, to that premise. .. are you joining us from Moscow today bud?

"Some will say I am calling America a Christian nation, and so I am. Some will say I am advocating Christian nationalism, and so I am."

"I'm a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

"The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church."

"The separation of church and state is a misnomer, people misunderstand it. Of course it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that [Thomas] Jefferson wrote, it's not in the Constitution,"

https://www.pewresearch.org/re...

If you get kickbanned from #grannypr0n for leaching, you start #grannypr0n2 it's very simple.

IDK what we're teaching kids these days but if you're part of this generation that gave us the overly centralized internet, and you have every tool at your disposal to create another damned happy space like r/fuckthoseotherguys but you complain about gatekeeping because that's too much work, then... I guess I don't have nice things to say to you. Just pointing out that it's all what you make it to be.

It's sad like arguing with the bouncer about how ugly the strippers are, pissed off you're not allowed in the club. It's all woke slop but you want to be there. And it's all virtual dude.. you can make another virtual room with your own ugly strippers but nobody wants to hear your unpopular bs in #saggytitsandpolitics or r/grannysnatchconfederacy so you feel entitled to speak to the billion people tuned into #internet, then bitch on /. about those mods. Then you'll bitch about the /. mods on /. OFC. Then go cry in 4chan or something?

It's the dumbest entitlement on display, but I cheer for that man arguing with the bouncer, it's funny as hell. Please take his money and let him once more get slapped around by the purple haired stripper with C-section scars and kicked out again, it sparks joy.

This is such a weird take on an Internet forum. You don't have to go there. It's as centralized as you make it out to be. It's not the only place to find other people that share your hobby. A single forum with hundreds of thousands or millions of members has moderation you disagree with... well no shit, that's fucking huge. Why are you in such a bigass space??? The rooms are virtual.

I grew up on IRC chat rooms with _tens_ of people, and moderators were dickheads then, because they're random people that got there first. So you go to a different channel. Fast forward today and some of you act like there's one singular canonical #linux with 300 million people in it and complain about being banned for your weird takes because you're entitled to a soapbox on your own terms in any sized virtual room you like. Go start a #linuxhottakes and moderate to your hearts content.

I'm sorry but you're all fucking weird. It's like going to a water park and complaining about the rules. The rules are because all the fucking people there... try a smaller pool or play nice with others because you're not the main character in a room with a million other people. You're not entitled to be. Call a room woke then act like you want to be there. Fucking nutjobs.

That's a problem? As someone from a northern climate, it baffles me that the fear of the dark is this powerful. I doubt predators lurking in the shadows are put out by a difference of 60 minutes. "Oh drat! My abduction is foiled by a clock adjustment. Curses!"

Repost with paragraph tags:

I wouldn't mind a required label for it, like the explicit lyrics warning on CD's. Its laguhable to think AI isn't used in games. What are they going to do, have an actor in India mechanical turk every pretend person? That was never a thing. "Make 1000 varying zombie skins" is a fine job for AI.

Who are you going to pay to sit around and draw up 1000 NPC's? Of course there's AI in games.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do... [ieee.org] Abstract from 1990: An experiment was conducted where neural networks compete for survival in an evolving population based on their ability to play checkers. More specifically, multilayer feedforward neural networks were used to evaluate alternative board positions and games were played using a minimax search strategy. At each generation, the extant neural networks were paired in competitions and selection was used to eliminate those that performed poorly relative to other networks. Offspring neural networks were created from the survivors using random variation of all weights and bias terms. After a series of 250 generations, the best-evolved neural network was played against human opponents in a series of 90 games on an Internet website. The neural network was able to defeat two expert-level players and played to a draw against a master. The final rating of the neural network placed it in the "Class A" category using a standard rating system. Of particular importance in the design of the experiment was the fact that no features beyond the piece differential were given to the neural networks as a priori knowledge. The process of evolution was able to extract all of the additional information required to play at this level of competency. It accomplished this based almost solely on the feedback offered in the final aggregated outcome of each game played (i.e., win, lose, or draw). This procedure stands in marked contrast to the typical artifice of explicitly injecting expert knowledge into a game-playing program. Published in: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks ( Volume: 10, Issue: 6, November 1999) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do... [ieee.org]'

I wouldn't mind a required label for it, like the explicit lyrics warning on CD's. Although its laguhable to think AI isn't used in games. What are they going to do, have an actor in India mechanical turk every pretend person? That was never a thing. Who are you going to pay to sit around and draw up 1000 NPC's? Of course there's AI in games. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do... Abstract from 1990: An experiment was conducted where neural networks compete for survival in an evolving population based on their ability to play checkers. More specifically, multilayer feedforward neural networks were used to evaluate alternative board positions and games were played using a minimax search strategy. At each generation, the extant neural networks were paired in competitions and selection was used to eliminate those that performed poorly relative to other networks. Offspring neural networks were created from the survivors using random variation of all weights and bias terms. After a series of 250 generations, the best-evolved neural network was played against human opponents in a series of 90 games on an Internet website. The neural network was able to defeat two expert-level players and played to a draw against a master. The final rating of the neural network placed it in the "Class A" category using a standard rating system. Of particular importance in the design of the experiment was the fact that no features beyond the piece differential were given to the neural networks as a priori knowledge. The process of evolution was able to extract all of the additional information required to play at this level of competency. It accomplished this based almost solely on the feedback offered in the final aggregated outcome of each game played (i.e., win, lose, or draw). This procedure stands in marked contrast to the typical artifice of explicitly injecting expert knowledge into a game-playing program. Published in: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks ( Volume: 10, Issue: 6, November 1999) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...'

It's this moral panic over water and power for datacenters - results in people going too far to prove a point.

I am not an alarmist, and I don't reach for the regulatory hammer on a whim - or, actually ever - but I can't think of more objectionable, destructive behaviour. Build an empire on the backs of the output of the masses, then systematically destroy the value of that world for everybody but themselves. How is this not hijacking click through en masse?

I think Google needs to be stopped. And since the moat is so vast, I think it should be done by government intervention.

Good luck with that, though, on the American front.