and yet the man can do what he wants with his own time and his own series, and fundamentally doesn’t owe anyone anything
There is something about this sentence that is so pathetic and cucked that it viscerally evokes bile in me. Like I want to physically harm the author for typing it.
Can confirm.
My father was a white ghetto rat, and he told me once that if somebody offers you 30$ for something worth 50$ (he liked to flip things, called it "hustlin'") then you pay your buddy 20$ to come over and burn that thing outside for you to tell the cocksucker to never come in your house and insult you that way again.
And the thing is, it works. People will be afraid to try and mess with you. You just have to make sure you don't go overboard and attract the attention of people bigger than you (like the law).
That's how it always goes. I recommend people read on things like "jury selection" process on a lot of big cases and see how its literally the Prosecutors hand picking people who will give them the result they want and forcing out people who don't have the right politics.
On the surface its not a terrible idea, "character enters dangerous game show for stupid vapid reasons" is basically like 1/3 of the cast in some of these shows.
But as its current year, I don't suspect it'll be given the same mockery those are often given either.
There is no doubt that's the case, but single mothers are running a one man cult where its obvious they are shit and manipulating their children, but said children worship them and think they are the epitome of womanhood.
Its one of the most common bases for the madonna/whore complex a lot of guys let drive them insane over.
The “diminishing returns” narrative is 100% bullshit
It is 100% valid because I 100% do not have the eyesight level necessary to even see the difference between 1080p and 4k. That's if I even owned a system capable of running and displaying such a high end picture. I don't imagine I'm alone in not spending thousands every other year to maintain a top of the line rig/monitor set up.
If a majority of people run your game on Medium settings, than the money you spent milking out the Ultra end is usually wasted. Double so if the System Requirements end up so high it scares off potential customers.
It doesn't matter if it happens because they are lazy and bad at their job, what matters is that it is wasted money/time on something that will not show anywhere near the return in sales.
Even then, paying 10 huge name streamers 100k is still only a million, while these companies are reaching hundreds of millions for their marketing. And I know most streamers do not cost anywhere near 100k. The Markiplier and Jacksectieye types might, but the rest is a small 4 figure sum and a free copy of the game.
That's my question is how are they reaching the sheer cost of some of these budgets, because they clearly aren't paying tens of millions to each streamer.
If your new games are so bad that they work and look as bad as games from 5 years ago
I don't even think this is a fair metric. Its hard to beat the point that graphics are already at in the last 5-7~ years short of going full body scans on everything. In fact trying to constantly one up your previous iteration is what has driven the cost of AAA gaming so high for these companies, as they keep paying millions of dollars more so that way the handful of people with MEGA ULTRA displays can see 5 additional pores on the character's face.
The problem continues to be that AAA companies are obsessed with making sure to kill off their previous games to keep the newest one the only one being played. Rather than let people choose which is their favorite in the series to play based on its specific gimmick or iteration, they must always be chasing a new carrot to move everyone over with. Which means a shit ton of money spent trying to one up themselves over and over, even if they creatively don't have anything to do it with.
There is a lot more factors at play, but I think everyone, consumer and company, spend so long thinking about "how is this one better than what came before?" and not enough time on "what make's this one worth playing *as well?" Being better everytime is a losing game because eventually you run out of bugs to fix and optimizations to make, whereas being also worth playing is always possible.
I still do not understanding how marketing budgets on games get that big anymore.
Sure it made sense when every AAA game needed TV commercials and a billion physical displays in every different game store in the world, but that's basically over. Those cardboards and window stickers add up bit by bit.
But now, marketing is literally making a trailer you put on your own Youtube channel and then tweet about it. The only major cost is how many influencers and game journos you pay to directly shill for you, which is still a fraction of an investment compared to the physical costs of old.
Sorry, but when the Leader of the Mages in DA2 goes "yep I'm scared, time to become a demon" and reveals he and all the people saying "not all mages!" were in fact secretly messing with it to have such level of powers they really lose the ability to pretend like they aren't all just a stubbed toe or curious night from fucking with it.
Its the Xmen problem, where morally they probably shouldn't be treated that poorly out of fear. But when they could just have a bad day or even just lose focus once and fucking kill an entire town, its well passed "well but we pinky swear we won't!" levels and a correct choice to just not even run the risk of letting them live period.
I'm not doubting you, I'm just saying that when I play an American made game with people speaking American English I, as an American, will fill in with our own racial stereotypes.
Especially as the divide between City Elves and Dalish is very much a "African vs African American" divide more than gypsy, who as far as I know don't have a long storied history of being proud tribal people living in the wilds before getting enslaved by another group.
So I think we can go with "its a bit of both" as they used a lot of "poor oppressed minority" tropes to create them.
And because of that, anyone dealing with blood magic must be dealt with in the exact same way. And because mages just can't fucking stop messing with the blood, mages need to be permanently dealt with themselves.
The "Tranquil Solution" wasn't just a funny holocaust reference, it was legitimately the best thing for everyone in the country.
Its been however many years and I still can't get
Should I get you a ladder, so you can get off my back
Looks like more Darkspawn
Out of my head. The PC lines really were so snarky that it really was emblematic of the era.
DA2 just built off a lot of the setups that DAO already had. Like, the wierd "Mages are Jews" to "Elves are niggers" thing is a DAO creation and DA2 just ran it into nightmarish levels.
You can actually trace Woke as a whole through the original three DA games, as each one reflects how Wokeness was at its time. So while DAO is pretty standard and offers a lot of rebuttals to the Woke talking points (like Sten and his entire race), a lot of it is being set up there for DA2 to run with it.
But, DA2 is also one of the funniest uber woke games. Because its still very early in that culture, so its super clumsy and almost every time proves the "racist/bigot" completely right by accident.
Like the mages are oppressed and watched because people are afraid they'll mess with blood magic (demon shit), which is "bad." But then almost every mage you meet from random rabble to their leader uses blood magic the moment they stub their toe (meaning they were messing with it before). So they are 100% in the wrong and belong in their camps being oppressed.
Origins is a good game on its own and it mostly completes its own story so you can play it and not engage further with the trainwreck.
Yeah I feel like he has some mental issue going on under the hood, because him when he is lucid (like talking about games or him a lot of years ago) and him arguing is really night and day. His argument style often is just blindly making shit up and then letting it roll off him when its disproven without even acknowledgement.
I really wish I could know more because its fascinating in a sad way.
All of that is true, but its in the same way that removing all water from an area prevents pests. Its weighed entirely as "this is the benefit" without balancing against the heavy baseline cost. Which is only the case when you assume the mutilation is a baseline and normalized.
We have results for that, I remember discussing it back in my psych undergrad over a decade ago. The physical pain is so severe that it creates a notable brain change similar to that of PTSD (if not literally just PTSD) that doesn't get wiped even with infantile amnesia. It was theorized that the restraints, the vision of your mother not helping, and the pain creates a very formative memory.
The fact that it was openly addressed and talked about in a classroom of 98% women not generations ago means its also not entirely a "groundbreaking study they don't want you to hear" as it can clearly get through in other places.
I know this is a real "dude trust me" source, but it was a very long time ago and I recall little specifics beyond the topic.
The circumcision thing is at the point where everybody clearly knows its wrong and barbaric, but nobody wants to be the one to acknowledge it because it would make everyone in America look like monsters and crumble a billion dollar industry from lack of foreskins. So they just pretend not to notice.
People turning to Jesus after years of gleeful, hedonistic sin is the same as a woman trying to "settle down" after spending her youth being a slut.
Its often entirely self serving, if they even mean it at all beyond the veneer. If they mean it truly, they should be doing so in humble appreciation of a second chance, rather than screaming about it for attention.
While everything you say is true, it goes even further than this.
The Menendez brother thing is in the news again, and their trial is famous for the jury being hard deadlocked. Why?
Because women unquestioningly believed their claims about being molested by their father, all the holes in that story be damned. Where the men either didn't believe it possible or found it a shaky claim, because of aforementioned holes.
And courts will go on record saying things like "we excluded any juror who didn't believe in the death penalty" or "we dressed her modestly to make her look more appealing" which is literally playing manipulation games to get verdicts without any care of evidence.