Not too take away any of epstein’s shittiness, but I’d bet bobby and the board would have already thought up mtx by 2012.

I mean DDR3 is provably fine. I ran a 16GB DDR3 machine with a goddamn 2500k up until several years ago and pre-2020 games usually ran fine, on playable framerates ( i did have win7, not sure how win10 fares ). Question is: who is this article for? Most tech enhusiasts have probably moved on by now, and even those are a small subset of PC users. “Normies”? Those moved on to phones and tables - it’s why MS Windows has lost 400million machines in 3 years. So who are all these people so left behind that DDR3 is an upgrade but are still currently itching to buy ram? I don’t get it.

Pricing on this is something else, man. 70€ base, 100€ deluxe, 120€ for the premium. And they moved most of content into the premium tier. The only difference btw the 70 and the 100 € versions is the car pass ( which could act as a huge car pack as in the past they had a couple dozen cars ). Also the premium tier does not include future car packs ( which may be fair but i have a feeling they will nickle and dime us for cars already present in FH4/FH5 ). There’s a good chance the game will be good, but you can also bet MS will squeeze us dry.

For an article quoting a study, this one is embarrasingly short on actual references or links to the reddit subs and posts it mentions. There’s literally only a link to the 2018 study and the rest coild well be speculation.

Now I don’t know about corporate manipulation, but what I can confirm I’ve seen is a lot of small businesses using reddit to shift opinions. For example: local rental car providers on the madeira sub. Or food retailers on my local city’s sub.

And, more worryingly, there’s an absurd amount of political propaganda. For example the waves of accounts on my native language sub supporting absolutely everything a political party does. Or the blatant manipulation being done on conservative. Or the sudden vanishing of near all kamala-supporting accounts in the morning following american election night. It’s absolutely astounding.

White cocksucka!! Swejin! Swejin!

Do you have a source for that? I’m curious about what they said

I mean, the historical and geographical context of the newer entries definitely adds to the satire, but GTA2 wasn’t a bad game at all. I def liked it more 1 and 3 at the time. Interesting that the dev team wasn’t fond of it.

Developers remain willing but reluctant

Management: “Maybe we’re not pushing hard enough”

I’m having mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it could be better for gog to break away from a stock listed company that has proved on occasion it still behaves like a stock listed company and likely still do in the future. Also it seems like they’re keeping their values.

On the other, gog has been fairly volatile and hasn’t always returned a profit. Without a big company behind, it may be just a few years of unprofitability away from from going under. More worryingly though, it doesn’t have the same staying power as steam or its infinite funds, so it might get harder to uphold those “no drm, independence” etc policies. Also, given their buyer profiles and how finicky gamers are in general, any single large controversy would also have immense impact.

Time will tell I guess

I agree but these are usually supposed to be the first line when games/news hit the web, and sometimes it appears that the only decent journalist left is Schreier, with everyone else seemingly following him and his direction. Paid coverage definitely accounts for some of the overlap, but like you said it’s probably just reviewers aiming for a greater audience.

There’s always steam curated lists for the rest, I suppose.

The one surprising bit about this is the lack of E33. I know it’s not Jason’s fault but it irks me that every game news outlet repeatedly highlights the same dozen games or so. I’m following four of them and 80% of coverage and reviews is for the same games over and over again. Only digitalfoundry strays off on occasion, and that’s because they aim towards a more technical discussion. There were literally 19000 games released on steam alone last year, and everyone seems to only cover E33, BG3, Blue Prince, Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, Avowed, CoD etc. I have to subscribe to obscure subs or youtube channels just to get coverage of the occasional forgotten indie.

Pacific Drive?

It’s a great game with a great story ( that I kinda rushed through because I couldn’t enjoy the constant tension - instead the couple playthroughs I watched were very enjoyable )

“When we were kids, we used to modify our parent’s shotguns and then shoot them for fun” has got to be one of the most american things i’ve read

Man, imagine the paranoia. You literally have a russian puppet for president, but are worried about infiltrations by communist spies from Cuba.

Plenty? I dunno, looks like they could use one more lane

In increasing order of casualness I recommend: Elite Dangerous->X3/X4->Everspace/Everspace 2-> No Man’s Sky.

Everspace 2 is a spiritual successor to Freelancer, so probably your best bet ( Everspace 1 is more roguelike, but holds up nicely ). Speaking of Freelancer, I hear the game is still alive and has a vibrant community around it.

If you ever want to revisit Elite shoot me a message, I may help you with starting up. They say Elite doesn’t have a learning curve but a cliff, so help is usually needed. Luckily the game has the most welcoming and helpful community I’ve seen in/around a video game.

Other than these, there’s Chorus, but I haven’t played that one and it seems more story driven than open-ended.

For those unaware, there is also Heroes of Science and Fiction, which is essentially homm 3 with a fresh scifi coat of paint and lots of qol stuff. It’s in early access but man it catches the vibe so well.

Seeing the series’ progression so far, I just know microsoft will stuff it full of FOMO crap and monetization, as well as a lot of AI generated stuff ( which, admittedly, may not be all bad ). But still, I’m pretty excited for it.

Time to fire up Anno 2205

…except they haven’t, have they? They still have to work 40h a week ( not including OT ) under increasing pressure to deliver fast. Productivity may have increased, yes, but they haven’t saved shit.