There are people who would be okay if it were Sony making the acquisition, but I want to believe that most people who are against it feel that no large company should be allowed to buy another large company.
It’s like, does no one remember what Microsoft did in the 90s? They were literally forbidding PC manufacturers from not selling any systems that didn’t include windows.
This deal is bad. It rewards shitty individuals and shitty companies, and hurts consumers and employees. This deal will be a calendar marker of when the gaming industry started to fall. Like when Disney bought Marvel and LucasArts.
I remember the first time I came in contact with DLC, coincidentally it was my first Steam game: Supreme Commander 2.
My first thought was: “What the fuck is this? Why isn’t this in the game?”. Later on, when DLC were getting more substantial, my thoughts changed to; ”Are they just rebranding Expansion Packs?”.
As other people noted, I don’t care about cosmetics. Even for Dota 2, which I’ve put over a thousand hours in and have played it 10 years, I just sell them on the marketplace to fund my next summer sale. The only time I buy stuff is when I want to support the game’s development.
My gaming time is too limited to worry about battle passes and shit like that. I just wanna click heads and farm creeps.
Edit: the one thing that does bum me out though is that back before item shops and shit, skins and unlocks used to mean something. Like, you’d see some dude in your Halo 3 lobby with a dope-ass helmet and you knew that he earned that from getting a Killtacular with only deagle headshots. Now it’s just, dude’s level 150. He must’ve swiped for the ultimate edition, XP boosters, or has too much free time.
What if Zuck comes out of his lizard hole and utters the word:
FEDIVERSE.
to proclaim that Meta, formally known as Facebook, is now changing their name to Fedi.
Yeah this seems false. SD cards are unreliable, hard to keep track of, and don’t actually store that much data for the price. I do think they use tapes though to store long term, low traffic data.
Reddit also had an aggressive recommendation system, where posts from your most recently interacted subs would show up more often. I would literally only open one sub via a post on the front page and the next time my /all would be filled with trash for that sub.
That’s one trend I hope doesn’t spring up over here. I hated the fact that 95% of the subs on /r/all were literally the same thing. Like, what was the difference between MadeMeSmile, DamnThatsInteresting, NextFuckingLevel? Just all the same clickbait trash, and then, as you say, some “organic” marketing campaign for the latest Marvel movie.
Edit:
Mastodon handles this by not having an algorithm. In order for a toot to gain traction, it actually needs to be boosted around so that people can see it. A great example of how this prevented “organic” marketing was with @Raspberry_Pi.
When they first joined, their SNS team tried the same easy brand tactics that they used on Twitter, trying to force engagement. It had the opposite effect, and the community backlash was fierce. They have since changed their messaging and become more genuine.
Since link aggregators usually need some kind of algorithm for a “front page,” I think the most important thing is to have it be transparent and static. No changing it every 4 months to increase engagement.
Most importantly, the community should also have a shared opinion on what kind of stuff they are okay with, and this can be more localized per instance.
I use Feeder for everything. Blogs, websites, (formerly) subreddits, and YouTube channels. RSS for YouTube is bigly clutch. My feed is chronological, not filled with random crap, and ad free.
I just tried to access it and I get redirection errors. I guess they didn’t account for integration testing during their most recent sprint.
For shows, Battlestar Galactica is always great. I just started watching Caprica and loving it so far. It might not be an “opera”, but it does so much to fill out the Battlestar Galactica universe.
I also just started reading The Expanse series and would definitely recommend it, even for someone like me who’s not an avid reader.
Not sure if it’s related, but the EU does seem quite interested in the #fediverse. See the EU Commission’s official #Mastodon account: @EU_Commission
Mastodon’s filter option doesn’t work all that well. I have it turned on and I still get stuff in other languages with the tags that I follow. I don’t mind it much since Mastodon has a translation feature.
This is why I subscribe to the NYT and in a way Minnmax (for games journalism). If you can afford it, news (no matter what sector) is too important not to pay for.
Sony isn’t just a gaming company though. They sell all kinds of home electronics and cameras. They also have their entire film and music divisions, not to mention their banking any insurance subsidiaries. Nintendo is the only platform holder that is just a gaming company.
You make a good point about the blow to creative freedom. Exclusivity doesn’t seem to correlate with innovation anymore (sans Nintendo). Even if you look at Sony, with its massive lead in quality first-party exclusives, the majority are gritty narrative third-person action games. They are easy to market because they have a compelling story, are mechanically simple to appeal to a wider audience, and are relatively short to lower the commitment.
Consolidation will kill creativity in the long term. Just look at the post-Disney MCU/Star Wars film industry. Games will surely follow, given the way things are headed.
Edit:
Disclaimer - Just my opinion and I play on PlayStation/Nintendo/PC.
Crazy idea, but maybe we just shouldn’t allow big ass companies to buy other big ass companies.
deleted by creator
For real though. I already have an app that does everything, my lovely #FireFox ❤️
#Mastodon has a feature where it’ll consolidate all the most linked to URLs in its explore tag. It doesn’t take you too any toots about the discussion, but shows that something similar is possible, even with federation involved.
I might have to look into it again. I’ve been primarily saving links using Obsidian synced to an S3 bucket. There’s a nice plugin that converts links to pretty markdown. I even made an iOS shortcut to automate the saving of pages. It’s nice and minimalist, but it does require Obsidian to view the pages (excluding just opening the bucket directly), so I can’t see my links on my work computer.