Hope he can personally reach out to people like Noah Gragson in the process.
Oh no!
How dare people choose not to mindlessly consoom every new bit of pop culture!
Nothing is ever good enough for these fools.
Didn't they cover up Nazi crimes during World War II as well?
I think I'll just stick to the games. How's that for something that "matters"?
This is so ridiculous. If only the social media mobs could see how this could be used against them.
I'm tempted to think that this is why even games with single player campaign modes like Gran Turismo 7 and the upcoming Forza Motorsport 2023 now force you to be connected to the Internet just to save progress.
They're probably getting ESG money for that too.
There was also this story from the weekend:
https://dirtfish.com/rallycross/world-rx/world-rx-fire-destroys-cars-and-cancels-lydden-hill-action/
An EV racecar battery fire got so bad an entire race weekend in the UK had to be canceled.
Maybe this technology just isn't ready for forced mass adoption yet?
They tried that back in 2007, and it dramatically underperformed critically and commercially.
I honestly think Vivek and Trump could be quite capable together.
At the very least, he absolutely deserves a place in a second Trump administration.
Whatever happened to the mute button?
Or just logging off if you don't like what people are saying about you. As far as I know, nobody's forcing them to play online.
How do you think we can get through to people at risk of making such a terrible, irreversible decision?
I remember that I used to have bad anxiety and identity issues as a teen, but I was lucky enough to see a professional who seemed to truly care about helping me understand growing up and learning why I felt so powerless and misunderstood.
He showed me that there were many ways I could direct that negative energy into positivity and appreciate myself for who I am.
He never put me on medication and never got me to get any surgeries or anything like that.
Instead, he showed me how to understand and capitalize on what I appreciate most in life and simply treat others the way I want to be treated. He's actually part of why I ended up supporting Trump and being pro independence and populism.
Sadly, many young people nowadays aren't lucky to get someone like that in their lives.
I probably would have ended up going down the dangerous path these troubled leftist LGBT people go through now if I went through those problems about 5 years later than I did.
That's why I can feel so passionate about this topic.
It's cruel and disgusting. That's all it is.
I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone; living with it sounds like sheer hell.
So people who grew up with Barbie but are now bitter and jaded and want that reflected in the media they consume?
Do you think Barbie will succeed?
Your comparison to Ghostbusters 2016 makes sense, but that movie flopped.
Could history repeat itself with Barbie, or could it actually profit?
I know someone who still struggles with socializing because the schools he went to punished and shamed students who even so much as talked in the hallways so much, they'd even punish the whole class for the actions of a few.
Basically, school made him more shy and introverted, and he's still trying to undo those effects decades later.
Kangaroos, demons, androids, dinosaurs, bears, oh my!
They wanted to write hard hitting commentary and "find the truth" at NYT or Washington ComPost but the only outlets that would employ them were pop culture ones.
Therefore, they use their job as a way to live out their failed dreams, hence the big push for politics at these websites that were supposed to just entertain people.
Use their voice?
How about they just focus on selling products and shut the fuck up about anything else?
Many modern pop culture consoomers cannot seem to think long term; they simply do not think about the possibility of deciding to play or watch an older work either for old time's sake, curiosity, or literally any other reason.
Only to have it not be accessible at all because it reached a BS expiration date.
What do you think some good solutions for changing this mindset are?
I'll bet it's because of chumps like those that game preservation is such a criminally low priority these days.
They can't possibly consider the idea that just because a franchise gets a new game doesn't mean it replaces the previous games.
Every game is different. The people I interacted with refused to understand that simple concept; not everything that was in the precious games will carry over to the new ones in the same way.
Even if they did, the context and structure in which the mechanics and content are used will be different from game to game.
I was in a GTPlanet forum recently and called out the forced DRM in Forza 2023.
I was told that hopefully, I didn't have a phone or email account if I didn't like this push for constant connectivity in everything.
I apparently didn't have room to talk if I did.
Because technologies that were expressly designed for communication from the outset are totally the same as products being designed first to entertain THEN get adapted around communication.
The amount of cope I see on that site is truly pathetic.
Isn't it crazy how people can be like that?
Literally having nothing else worthwhile in their lives other than video games and therefore being perfectly okay with bad design choices that let them get away with using online games as substitutes for real life human interactions and experiences?
I want to encourage everyone on this forum to check out the YouTube channel Austin Ogonoski.
He's done an excellent job of breaking down what really happens behind the scenes of racing game culture and how it has sometimes even affected real world racing. He has also discussed how esports participants in this genre are essentially tricked into thinking they'll be big stars by dedicating their whole life to a game only to be taken advantage of by greedy promoters.
He's currently a game tester, but also an oval race car driver at the grassroots level and a former aide in the mental health field, so he knows exactly what he's talking about having come from all these scenes and understood their respective ins and outs.
He's also discussed how the esports to real life racing stars are grossly misrepresented in the media. Essentially, such drivers like the GT Academy graduates and NASCAR racers like Josh Berry or Willliam Byron already had a good amount of real world race experience; therefore, their performances in video games were simply another way the people around them helped market them to teams and sponsors better.
I think his channel is well worth your time. A good starting point would be his videos on Jason Jacoby, essentially the Chris-Chan of racing games.
Apparently, car racing esports are not nearly as popular as sponsors and developers make them out to be.
Your average sanctioned iRacing event can barely get 5,000 views on YouTube, the official esports teams have very small social media presences and only like and retweet each others tweets; and at official Gran Turismo and F1 esports events, the crowd sizes tend to be rather underwhelming.
When you do see an audience, that's because it's mostly made up of sponsors, VIP members, and family members. There is almost no organic, grassroots fanbase around racing esports.
Gran Turismo Sport was curated around esports to the extent of being online only, and only a fraction of that game's players play the esports modes it was designed around.
Furthermore, that game has official FIA (the promoter for WRC, F1, and other big name real world racing leagues) championships, and the participants don't even get paid. They all have to pay for their own travel and accommodation, and in especially egregious cases, have had to give controllers and other prizes earned in the events back to the organizers.
All those hours spent behind the wheel of a pretend racecar, sacrificing one's life to become a top pro racing game player; are essentially for nothing other than maybe bragging rights. The same is almost certainly true of GT's contemporaries like iRacing as well.
When your ideas are applied to racing games (my favorite genre), it sounds like they're specifically being turned into always-online live services because an entire generation of consoomers has successfully been fooled into thinking that spending their entire lives playing these games every hour of the day online (we tend to call this "no-lifing" a game BTW) will be their tickets to real-world professional racing stardom a la Jann Mardenborough or Lucas Ordonez.
So, because so many people focus so much on the online portion of these games and demand more regulation and attention to them from the developers, this is the part of the game developers commit most to.
Anyone who just wants to play the game for fun gets neglected by the developers because they're too busy basing their game around being the subject of the next feel-good media story.
It sounds like you're saying that the pursuit for unrealistic fame and fortune is what ruined games rather than esports specifically.
What do you think some solutions to this could be in the long term?
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea for companies to put all their eggs into the EV basket.
I know this probably could have happened with an ICE or hybrid car, but if EV fires can be this bad, maybe the technology just isn't ready for forced widespread adoption.