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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Pretty much what I’ve been saying for almost a decade, mostly in response to “game development is expensive, that’s why AAA games need *insert extra revenue streams*”. My response has always been that games are bloated with feature creep and if there was an actual issue with development costs the first thing you can cut are features that don’t really add to the game. Not only do you cut development costs but you arguably make a better product.

    Nice to get some validation because it’s been a rather controversial opinion. People have argued nobody would buy AAA if it’s not an open world with XP, skills and crafting. Or a competitive hero based online shooter with XP, unlockables, season pass and 5 different game modes. I guess now people don’t buy those even if they are all those things



  • I don’t think you have an idea of how much of an information bubble Russia is in? In case you haven’t noticed the “western” internet speaks almost universally English. Unless you’re in some niche national community you’re unlikely to see any other language. We’re speaking English right now and that’s not my first language. Last time I checked something like 1 in 20 Russians understand English and even less can actually speak it. The vast majority of the Russian population, despite having near full access to the internet, are locked in the Russian sphere of information. And their primary search tool, Yandex, is majority owned by the oligarchs.

    When you live in Russia you really have to go out of your way to escape the Russian propaganda. The vast majority of people in any country would never go to such lengths to get an broader view of a subject. Most probably wouldn’t even understand they need a broader view than what their regular media feeds them.


  • For movement I would take something like a HOTAS over keyboard. For example in games with multiple movement speeds finding the right speed is rather cumbersome on keyboard because the key press is an on/off and not a scale.

    Similarly on keyboard movement is restricted to 8 directions. If you need to move in some other direction most people actually use a mouse to compensate for the lack of movement options because it’s too cumbersome with a keyboard.

    There are benefits to using keyboards but there are places where you can use something better. Analogue input simply gives better movement options.



  • I second Shadows of doubt. I haven’t played the release version yet (I’m still building factories in Satisfactory) but I can give my most memorable detective work from early access. I was doing side jobs because my murder case had gone cold. I had a gig where I needed to find proof that the clients partner is having an affair. The information I got about the potential lover were some vague physical traits like eye color and shoe size. But the key information was that the lover’s partner worked as Wait staff. So I

    1. went through every restaurant, bar, diner etc in the city.
    2. Got a list of every wait staff member.
    3. Found out where they live.
    4. Broke into their house.
    5. Found their partner information.
    6. Found the potential lover.
    7. Started looking for key evidence to tie them to the affair.

    The last step is where my gig ended up in a roadblock. I’m not 100% sure but I think it was bugged because I did everything I could come up with. I went through the clients partner personal stuff and found nothing. I went to their work and found nothing. I went through the lovers personal stuff and found nothing. I went to lovers work and found nothing. I even planted a tracker on both of them and followed them around to see if I missed something and I still found nothing. I even checked the mailboxes. So the key evidence was probably bugged and I couldn’t find it.

    Despite that I haven’t had such a unique experience in any other game. It’s up there in my backlog waiting for me to return, but first the factory must grow.



  • Don’t put that much importance on dates. You’ll stress yourself out and if your date gets even a whiff of you making it into a big deal it’s going to put stress on them as well. I dated for years before meeting my significant other. Some were good, most were meh and some were bad. Almost all the bad dates were either me or the other person taking the date too seriously and not really opening up to participate.

    I used to set up dates in restaurants/museums/parks etc. I wanted to visit. First of all it gave me some idea of who I’m meeting because I would discuss with them what places on my list would also interest them. And it also doubled as a way to get something out of the date if it was a bust, at the very least I would be able to enjoy the atmosphere.




  • That’s not an entirely accurate representation, because after taxes you still use that money for housing and food and transportation etc. In business terms that 50k would still contain operating costs. So that $120 might still seem a lot.

    That 50k a year should be extra money, the money left in your pocket after taxes, housing, groceries, other necessities and debts are paid off. That would give an accurate representation of how insignificant a $120 ticket would be.







  • Since you’re so incapable of thinking for yourself I’ll go through it again with everything you mentioned. Same prerequisite except now everyone has a phone and excess phones turn instantly to waste, or do you need a point by point explanation on how excess supply turns into waste?

    Scenario 1: Every year 1000 new phones get released.

    • Y1: 500 people buy new phones and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 phones just go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
    • Y2: Same thing. End of year waste is 2000 phones.
    • Y3: Same thing. End of year waste is 3000 phones.
    • Y10: Still the same thing. End of year waste is 10k phones.

    Scenario 2: Every 3 years 1000 new phones get released.

    • Y1: 500 people buy new phones and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 new phones go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
    • Y2: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
    • Y3: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
    • Y5: New phone comes out. 500 people and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 new phones go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 2000 old phones
    • Y6: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 2000 phones
    • Y7: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 2000 phones
    • Y8: New phone comes out. 500 people and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 new phones go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 3000 old phones
    • Y0: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 3000 phones
    • Y10: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 3000 phones

    As you can see. Even with supply meets the demand exactly you generate waste if you release a new phone every year. If the supply exceeds the demand it generated waste. I don’t see how it could be made any clearer beyond also going over your comment point by point.

    Why would you make your scenario supply constrained?

    Because how do you create a secondary market that would buy used phones? I could’ve gone with “people are poor” but that is much harder to put into an example. The supply constraint itself doesn’t matter, but I did my best with the new example.

    Your argument is simply if we sold less phones, less would go to e-waste, and duh.

    Nope. My argument was that if we made less phones less would go to e-waste. That also covers unsold phones that go straight into waste as evident from my new example.

    That wasn’t debate, it was whether releasing new phones every year was wasteful vs new phones being released every 2-3 years.

    If you release a new phone every year you manufacture more phones. I guess technically you can manufacture the same amount of the same model for 2-3 years as you would manufacture yearly new phone. But that makes no sense from an enterprising point of view because you reach market saturation and the phones simply don’t get sold, you’re just manufacturing a loss for the company. Even if you manufacture the same model yearly you’re still going to manufacture them less (due to demand dropping) than if you made a new model every year.

    Your scenario also assuming people buy used or they just don’t have a phone. People who buy a used phone generally do so instead of buying a new phone.

    If you paid attention you would’ve noticed that in both previous scenarios 800-900 people bought used phones and only 100-200 people bought brand new phones. I did that deliberately because you argued that reselling the phone has an effect when it really doesn’t. At the end of the line the person who bought the last used phone throws their current phone away because you can’t sell that to anyone. Which means as long as phone is manufactured regardless of whether it gets sold or not or resold or not, eventually it will go in the bin as e-waste. The best way to reduce waste is to not produce excessively like we’re doing right now.


  • Are you stupid? Let’s say we have 1000 people and they all want the latest phone, all manufactured phones get bought and everyone sells their old phones. And phones don’t break.

    Scenario 1: Every year 200 new phones get released.

    • Year 1. 200 most willing to pay the highest price buy a new phone, 800 are without a phone
    • Year 2. The same 200 buy the latest model and sell their old one. The next 200 get the “new” used phone. 600 are without phones.
    • Year 3, 4 and 5 I imagine are self-explanatory. By the end of year 5 everyone has phone.
    • Year 6. The most willing buy the 200 new phones and sell their old phone. The next group buy the previous group phones and sell their current phone. The last group has nobody to sell to because nobody wants their phone. 200 phones go into e-waste.
    • Year 7. Goes like year 6 except now there’s a total of 400 phones in e-waste.
    • Year 8, 9 and 10 follow the same pattern. By the end of year 10 there 1000 phones in e-waste.
    • Year 20. By the end of the year there will be 3000 phones in e-waste.

    Scenario 2: 100 phones get released (to better stimulate the real world because someone is going release a phone anyway, but you can also imagine 200 phones releasing every 2 years as the numbers will the same for every even year).

    • Year 1. 100 people get a phone.
    • Year 2. 100 people buy the new phone and sell the old one. 100 people buy the old phone.
    • Years 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the same pattern. By the end of year 10 everyone has a phone
    • Year 11 the first year phones go into e-waste because nobody wants them. Total 100 phones in e-waste.
    • Year 12 the next 100 phones go into waste. Total 200 phones in e-waste.
    • Years 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 are the same pattern.
    • Year 20. By the end of the year 1000 phones are e-waste.
    • Year 40. By the end of the year 3000 phones are e-waste.

    It literally cannot be empirically untrue because what I said is mathematically true. Let’s say that in both scenario 1 and scenario 2 at the end of year 50 they decide to throw away all phones and never create another phone again. In scenario 1 there would be 10 000 e-waste phones. In scenario 2 there would be 5000 e-waste phones. The more you create the more waste will come down the line. If you want less waste, make less phones.

    And before you go “but recycling?” only about 20% of e-waste gets recycled and the recycling process doesn’t recycle all the waste.