If your job can be replaced with GPT, you had a bullshit job to begin with.

This one’s funny to me, because the people who WILL try to replace you with GPT don’t care if they CAN replace you with GPT. They just will.

Look at how it’s haphazardly shoved into everything for no reason whatsoever already.

Oh you dun goof’d now!

That’s crazy. Makes a lot of sense.

I always tried to be the “shockingly nice person to game with” whenever I could. It was a lot more fun than just being mean to people for no reason.

I never understood that impulse to scream epithets over xbox live or whatever.

Ah, another Poltergeist fan, I see. :p

Ugh, the world of “branded people.” Everything is like “Add a picture of yourself, or you won’t seem trustworthy!”

Yeesh. Some artists and such can make it using a pseudonym, but it’s rare in more professional circles…but now if you hope to be taken seriously as a professional, you’re expected to put your real super genuine self out there.

…and we get news stories of people being harassed and doxxed literally to death. It’s crazy…

Facebook made it almost fashionable to do so.

"

Zuck: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard just ask

Zuck: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns

Friend: what!? how’d you manage that one?

Zuck: people just submitted it

Zuck: i don’t know why

Zuck: they “trust me”

Zuck: dumb fucks

"

One of many sources

I remember when it was just funny edgy humor that was clearly satirical for the most part because a lot of us were just dumb kids. It was abrasive and stupid but you had this feeling everyone was in on the joke.

But bizarre satire has turned to deeply held conviction.

I’m not just sad that the mean spirited trolling persists, but that it’s gotten more sincere and often must be taken seriously. :(

I would posit a big part of this is because early-net days were primarily for just socializing and sharing cool stuff (heck yeah, I miss it.) Artists probably didn’t make a majority of their living through the 'net. If something was shared it was likely just “I think this is cool, folks!”

Nowadays, to say the Internet is heavily commercialized would be a massive understatement. Every little interaction is monetized. Many people make their entire living through e-commerce. It’s just how things went.

Meanwhile you have a billion faceless sandfleas with repost-botfarms trying to hustle cash with the stupidest methods possible.

You’ll see entire channels where animations or paintings or whatever are circulated on socials like youtube, twitter, or tiktok with the artist tag conveniently cropped out (if there was one).

Some are outright stealing the work for profit (selling tshirts or something), while others are just using it to farm clicks, which is also a route to profit.

The artist who made the work is cheated, perhaps unaware, as some click-grifter gets all the attention. And that sucks. :( As an artist myself, I try to make sure I share the sources for stuff now, because recognition is a form of thanks, at the very least.

I miss the sharing internet…the attention economy has basically turned the internet into a sociological illustration of “The paperclip apocalypse”. :(

I like to think I’m reasonably intelligent but whatever the heck Gmail does with its reply “conversation” order absolutely bamboozles me. It decides to just hide messages in the middle seemingly at random too, and gives them all reply buttons.

Agh!

The same people who carelessly hit “reply all”, I imagine. Lol

This is how I felt about online gameplay too. Someone being a turd? Block em. I still had some GREAT interactions with random players.

But nowadays every online game is dead silent. People are scared of toxicity so they’re all sequestered in separate discord servers. Might as well be playing with bots. =\

…Pretty sick of Discord. Lol.

Hahaha I used to have a shirt from “Jinx” back when they were cool that said “I eat Nøøbs”.

And “Play in your world. Get pwnd in mine.”

Wouldn’t be caught dead in those now. But haha it was amusing in ~2005.

It was a simpler time where a shirt that simply said “gamer” wouldn’t get you socially sneered at.

Been to the Arch forum too ey? :p

Haven’t seen it here yet: Metro 2033 (sequels good too)

I’d also say S.T.A.L.K.E.R for the similar elements. But it’s pretty well known and if it interests you, you know why you should be playing it. :p

Metro 2033 wowed me, and I still think of it fondly. Y’see, at the time, everyone was loudly clamoring for “open world this” and “RPG progression system that” and “Every choice matters branching storylines!”. Everything had to be marketed as some huge pseudo-endless experience with limitless freedom. Sure, sure, there’s a place for that. BUT…

Metro 2033 is a fairly linear post apocalypse shooter based off of a novel of the same name that doesn’t overstay its welcome. And know what? It feels like playing through a good book.

You experience this twisted, scary, often beautiful world through Artyom’s eyes as he explores hostile tunnels and the inhospitable surface, and along the way you meet a cast of very interesting, very “alive” feeling characters. The various mutant creatures, too, have fascinating behaviors and personalities. Even though many parts are scripted, you still feel a sense of awe with seeing the consistency with how these things behave.

Subterranean tunnels and frozen post-nuke wastelands feel ALIVE when you’re checking your map with a lighter, or scrounging for a gas mask after yours cracked, and you cling to the numbered, desperate breaths through your last filter. (I’m being dramatic it rarely gets THAT desperate lol.)

The real beauty of the game, like humanity’s remnants, are under the surface. It’s subtle. There’s a hidden morality system keeping track of how Artyom reacts to the world, and the overall themes and sociology go much further than “war is bad mmkay?”. Do you meet brutality with brutality, or do you combat the darkness of this world with understanding and mercy?

Sadly, Metro Last Light carries on with 2033’s bad ending as canon. Which makes sense, but 2033’s good ending is so GOOD.

They’re regularly ridiculously cheap now, and I personally loved the experience.

Also: The best difficulty system I’ve ever seen in a shooter. It feels like playing on “Ranger Hardcore” is the intended experience. It doesn’t go the lazy route of making the player weak and the enemies strong. It goes for realism.

Enemies get smarter but will actually go down in a good hit or two…But careful!..So will you.

Woo! ALWAYS a good day to see InkScape getting some updates! I suck at it but I sure do appreciate it. :D

Thanks! I appreciate it. :)

And yeah same here. There very much was a point I just rolled my eyes and went “FINE. You got something to say, just say it already.” I think we’re just sensitive to being cheaply manipulated by media lol!

Actually one more game on my mind that did this well: Metro 2033. Incredible atmosphere, and the “moral” is very nuanced. It’s one of those things that feels profound when it hits you and most people weren’t even aware there was a “moral system.” (No shame in looking up which actions help get the good ending)

I highly recommend it.

I got one for ya! Check out:

Heat Signature

You dynamically board spaceships, sneak around them, complete objectives, and extract before you’re captured. There’s a really cool time stopping mechanic so you can do things like “Shoot at this guy but throw this object at that guy” without needing real-life impossible reflexes.

It’s got a ton of really cool ideas and I had to force myself to put it down and take care of Real Life Stuff. :p

I played that demo too! I just remember the quest where the cranky old dude was like “Ahh, I forgot THE WIFE! Go get me wife for me” and I cracked up at how nonsensical it all felt.

This feels like a unique one I should actually put the time into. It just felt so “weird” in a good way! I could never tell exactly what kinda game it was from the marketing.

Right there with you. (Uh oh, accidentally spawned a rant lol)

It’s definitely a game that put way more thought into clever artsy storytelling and “subversion” above most else. I didn’t enjoy the “forced” element either.

I liked that it tried something different. I like that it tried to be a bit meta, but it did so in a “high on their own farts” kind of way.

All the clever storytelling is really good though! The “You always seem to keep going down no matter how high you start from, past points of no return” aspect, lots of spirals (I think?), the voice lines becoming more unhinged. (He goes from “Target that tango!” to “KILL THAT SUNNOVABITCH!”), their gear gets gradually more destroyed. A lot of really deep thought put into those aspects!!

But yeah, the infamous “Whisky/(Willy?) Pete”

For the WP part, the creators themselves say something like “At that point, you could have just turned off the game, but you had to keep playing.”

Which I feel felt SO CLEVER in the writing room, but it is rather insulting. Like, man, how pretentious can you get?? Basically to them, it would have been some kinda moral achievement if their game product had a 95% refund rate and their studio got shut down because players refused to follow a forced narrative to hurt digital people in a video game they bought with very real money.

So, yeah, it felt clever, but also like some really dark prank that kinda just cheats the player and calls them a horrible person for having the good faith to expect a good time out of a videogame. If “There’s always a choice” and quitting is an ending, why wasn’t there a cutscene-credits ending there? THEN you have slightly more ground to berate your player’s choices.

HOWEVER, I also think there’s a valuable commentary here on how, unlike players, soldiers can’t just walk away. They’re oath-bound to be blunt instruments of their handlers, and, like the player, they might be compelled to keep making horrible decisions that help nobody, hoping some heroic good might come out of it.

So uh, the moral is “Don’t pay recruiters any mind if you value your personal autonomy, kids.”?

BioShock I felt did a much better job with making the player consider the “follow the objectives to progress” assumption, and Metal Gear Solid was a fantastic anti-war game without beating you over the head for it.

I’m as sick of US-Mil funded propaganda games as the next person, but I feel like a game designed to emotionally manipulate players and berate them for giving it a chance is ultimately…cheap.

Now THIS is the kinda stuff I was hoping would be pushed to the top! Nice recommend, it looks awesome!