Waldorf

Sadly, yes. There’s a pretty notorious transphobic organization calling themselves the LGB Alliance, with the aim of trying to drive a wedge.

I’m beginning to suspect this thread is just you having a personal grudge and vagueposting about it.

Kirby Air Riders. I waited 22 years for this sequel and it delivered. I’m actually blown away by how much Sakurai has managed to evolve on the concept.

Quite a lot of modern anime. My list of all-time favorites has become dominated by shows from just the last few years. Apocalypse Hotel, Apothecary Diaries, Bocchi the Rock!, CITY: The Animation, Dungeon Meshi, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Takopi’s Original Sin.

Farfetch’d

The death of monoculture comes for gaming too. The sheer number of games out there means you can always find some niche gem that really appeals to you and you specifically, but then you might not find anyone else who knows it and wants to talk about it.

How would you define oversaturated then? Since you counted them up and said seven isn’t a lot, is there a certain number that’s a cutoff?

Oversaturation should be relative to what the market will bear. They’re absolutely right that the time commitment is what really matters here. You might not think seven sounds like a lot, but no one’s committing to grinding battle passes in seven live services at once.

If we were talking about something like visual novels, seven isn’t a lot because you’ll finish one and move on to the next. But seven live services is a lot of live services, because it’s more than what people will play.

Breaking news: Company wants consumers to buy new product. Details at 11.

I feel like hero shooters, and many other genres, have players swearing allegiance to one game and hating on all the rest. The FGC is a unique anomaly for having this shared space where the only way we can make our offline events sustainable is to put them all under one roof and encourage players to support as many games as possible.

That’s something you don’t see in any other genre, even the idea of a HSC sounds laughable. I think that’s why in other genres it’s saturation, only in the FGC is a rising tide lifting all ships.

People say they’re sick of live services, but the successful ones are still doing hella numbers. Execs have seen how much money Marvel Rivals is making and they want a piece. I think the real problem is that they’ve become so saturated. Most gamers already have one or two live services they’re hooked on, and these games demand so much of your time that they’re not going to fit another into their rotation. Do people truly hate live services, or do they just hate the ones they’re not currently playing?

Live services also come with an expectation that they have to be a massive megahit overnight or else they’re dead on arrival. All or nothing. With the budgets that get poured into these games, the only way to get a return on investment is to hit it big big big. I have a lot of opinions the way gamers throw around the word ‘dead’ to describe any multiplayer game with a less than Fortnite-sized playerbase, argumentum ad SteamCharts has done irreparable damage to gaming discourse, but it is a sad truth that a lot of modern multiplayer games can’t just find their niche and be comfortable with that.

And I say all this as someone whose favorite multiplayer games have a matchmaking system that consists of just pitting you against whoever’s available, or even a Discord server where you ping a matchmaking role and hope someone responds. A modest little indie game can sustain a tight-knit community that way, but it’ll never fly for a big budget live service. I have games I love dearly that I can’t actually recommend to people because getting matches can be a chore that I doubt most of you want to deal with.

This then leads to this self-fulfilling prophecy where a live service with this kind of anti-hype train is what seals its grave. Live services are an investment to get into, but it’s already been pronounced dead, so don’t sink any cost into it because no one else will. I have games that I’ve enjoyed but couldn’t justify putting money into because the future looked too uncertain, which is exactly how they ended up dying.

Maybe there’s even a bit of us vs. them, because market saturation has made the fight for an active playerbase so cutthroat, people don’t want to see a competing title risk siphoning players away from their preferred game. I’ve even been there too, my favorite game of all time dropped off because another game came in and split its playerbase.

But mostly, I think a lot of people just like shitting on the new target of the day without even thinking too hard about why. Making fun of a flop has always been a popular gamer pastime. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen all time time, dating back before we even had the term ‘live service’. TORtanic is the one that immediately comes to mind for me, the one people made such a big deal out of that they had to come up with a funny name for it. Anyone remember that?

I’d love to see it being used by enemies so they’re challenging without cheating, though.

This is a different sort of problem that’s outside the scope of generative AI. Making a computer opponent that can kick a human player’s ass is technology we’ve had since Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997.

The problem isn’t actually making a computer that’s challenging, that’s been solved. The problem is that it won’t be any fun for the human if the computer is actually allowed to go all out, if Kasparov couldn’t win in 97 then you sure as hell aren’t winning today. But it also won’t be any fun if you nerf it too badly, low level chess bots are weird. The sweet spot isn’t just a matter of difficulty either, the nearly unsolveable part is getting it to play in a way that feels like a realistic human opponent.

And that’s just from a turn-based game, kinda the closest thing to a level playing field humans were ever gonna get. For any game played in real time, the computer is able to treat it like it’s being played at 60 turns per second. Is it “cheating” for the computer to have perfect reflexes, but otherwise still be following the rules of the game perfectly? How would you even try to take this away from the computer to make it see games the way humans do?

Generative AI doesn’t have any kind of solution for any of this. ChatGPT famously can’t play chess, at all. It’s a different type of AI that really can’t have any useful application here.

You’ll never convince diehard MAGA true believers. But it’s worth recognizing that that’s not all Trump voters, it’s not even the majority of them. Swing voters can always swing back the other way.

You can really only talk to those who are on the fence and willing to listen. If they’re not willing to listen, don’t waste your breath.

For those who are willing to listen, start with why they voted for Trump to begin. Many voters in this country were struggling to make ends meet and didn’t feel like the Biden administration was doing enough for them, so they were desperate for change. Trump preyed on that desperation, told them that it’s all immigrants’ fault, it’s trans people’s fault, it’s woke’s fault, it’s whatever scapegoat he blames next’s fault, so if you vote for him he’ll own the libs to Make America Great Again. A lot of people voted for him because they felt unheard by establishment politicians and were desperate enough to believe a con man who sounded like the only person in the room actually speaking to their fears.

If they are willing to have the conversation, get to the root of those fears. Ask if Trump has actually made their lives better. Attempt to deprogram anything directed to the scapegoats he blames it on. Try to pivot to Democratic policies that actually can help in tangible ways.

But again, I cannot stress this enough, this can only get through to people who are open to listening in the first place. If you try to preach at people who are not, they will dig their heels in deeper. Pick your battles carefully, figure out who is worth talking to.

The original Xbox is older now than Super Mario Bros 3 was when the Xbox came out.

Almost twice as old, actually.

Canvas Curse might not be retro

Canvas Curse is older now than Dream Land was when Canvas Curse came out.

Miyamoto and Sakurai envisioned the original Kirby’s Dream Land as a My First Game for beginners. That was an explicit design goal for the game.

That said, many of the games do have some harder postgame challenges tucked away. In fact that too dates all the way back to Dream Land’s Extra Game that can be accessed by Up+A+Select on the title screen. Extra Game is arguably still not that hard, but it does set some precedent for what’s to come in later titles.

Super Star put a bigger focus on this with The Arena, a rather long boss rush gauntlet combining every boss from every preceding sub-game, with limited healing. The remake, Super Star Ultra, adds new sub-games that pretty much pick up where the original’s difficulty curve left off - the original Super Star starts with Spring Breeze, a condensed retelling of Dream Land, and SSU’s new content starts with Revenge of the King, a remix based on Dream Land’s Extra Game. Then SSU ends with The True Arena, incorporating all the new content, including harder versions of the original bosses and a new True Final Boss.

Super Star Ultra pretty much set the tone for modern Kirby after that. Return to Dream Land, Triple Deluxe, and Planet Robobot all feature a direct reprise of both The Arena and The True Arena, the latter incorporating other postgame challenges from those games, and all of which culminate in their own True Final Boss.

Also, for a self-imposed challenge, you can always try playing without copy powers.

https://wikirby.com/wiki/Difficulty
https://wikirby.com/wiki/Extra_Mode

It really depends on what kinds of games you want to play. The AAA industry is largely a mess these days, but it’s not like those are the only games that exist.

I built my PC on a modest budget several years ago, and it’s still overkill for my favorite 2D indie games. Setting up Steam shouldn’t be difficult, nor should downloading from itch.io.

I bought a Switch 2 at launch, and that’s pretty much just plug and play.

Emulation is a bit more tinker-y to set up, but it’s really not too hard to get a nice library of classics at your fingertips.

Trying to convince people I know to join the Fediverse is like, well, it’s a lot like trying to convince people to switch to Linux. They’re not gonna do it and I’ll look like a jackass if I talk about it too much.

If there was an easy way to grow this platform overnight, we’d be doing it. Reality is there’s no shortcut, all we can do is continue building community with the people who are here and hope that we see some slow and steady incremental growth.

I primarily used reddit for niche hobbies and fandoms that have no equivalent here. Small userbase * niche special interest = I might possibly be the only person on this platform who’s into some of my hyperfixations.

With a large enough critical mass, more users can hopefully mean more shared interests to talk about.

Can you clarify what you mean by ‘authentically “modern leftist”’? There are a lot of people on this platform who identify as leftists, but I have no idea what you mean by 'authentically “modern leftist” here. I can’t answer your question because I’m not even sure what you’re really asking.

Posting such a vaguely defined question from a brand new account with no post history feels rather trollish.

I would prefer to have it come from someone who… is not Andrew Yang.