Grauwacht
27d ago
I find it odd that you have a very similar ranking of the FromSoft titles with Sekiro on top, yet you still disagree with my point. In my view, Sekiro is the best title in part because it is so tight. There is a limited amount you can do in terms of grinding to defeat the bosses. So you just have to... uh... git gud. In contrast, in Elden Ring you can basically make the game as easy or as hard as you want by using ashes or meta builds. This makes the game more accessible in the same way that a dedicated easy mode would have made it more accessible. At the same time, it creates the risk of having overtuned bosses like Malenia. You couldn't have a Malenia type boss in Sekiro because almost nobody would beat it. So it is exactly the tightness, that a bounded difficulty level brings, that may have made Sekiro the better game.
Full agreement on the second paragraph. Comparison with others is part of the enjoyment for some people.
Sure, the flanderization of Dark Souls is bad. Sure, some people have dumb opinions and justify it with git gud. I wouldn't blame it on the lack of easy mode though.
I am generally against taking an established franchise to a completely new direction that alienates many of it's old fans, whether that be adding an easy mode or making it insanely hard. Therefore, I would reject it on these grounds. A better example would be creating a new franchise that is so hard that I can't beat it. I am perfectly fine with this shrug
Grauwacht
27d ago
Becoming fluent in another language as an adult is an achievement that not everyone can do though. On the other hand, nobody is proud of learning their mother language because it's expected. It seems to me that this supports my argument. I am not arguing that pride comes solely from comparison with others, just that if basically everyone can do something, it's hard to be proud of doing that thing.
Grauwacht
27d ago
I don't think most people can cook that well. Everyone can put a frozen pizza in the oven or cook Ramen. But you wouldn't be proud of that. Are you sure that your sense of pride is completely independent of your environment? I would guess that you would feel somewhat less proud if everyone else was a 3* chief. Then, being proud of what would be considered a moderately complex dish today would be equivalent to being proud of cooking Ramen.
Grauwacht
27d ago
Some games I remember as at least reasonably difficult (>=6/10): Ninja Gaiden series, Castlevania series, Mega Man series, early Zelda titles, early Mario titles, Mickey Mania, Gothic I-II(NotR), Mafia, System Shock 2. These are all proper games without an insane amount of artificial difficulty. It feels like most modern games on "normal" are like 3/10 at most. I think you are missing one important reason for why games are less difficult today: The market is much broader, implying that the average skill level is much lower.
Grauwacht
27d ago
If your sense of pride in your own accomplishments depends on others not being able to do it, that reflects pretty poorly on you.
Can you give me an example of something that you are proud of, that everyone else can also do? The only stuff I can think of would be a depressed person managing to get out of bed in the morning and cleaning their trash or something. But what about everyone else?
Grauwacht
27d ago
Is it not better to have a clear win condition, so you don't even need to have the argument about what counts as winning?
Yes, I realize that some people consider using ashes in Elden Ring as cheating. Clarity is a matter of degree. I have, for example, never heard anyone complaining about beating Sekiro in any semi-normal way as cheating. Btw. the Cuphead easy mode doesn't count because it doesn't let you advance in the game. That's why I put it into the list of "hard games".
Grauwacht
27d ago
I think there is good and bad victim blaming. Victim blaming means that there is some sort of self-protective behavior that you need to engage in, otherwise people will have less sympathy for your situation. It is bad if this self-protective behavior is unreasonable (walking through a park at daytime, taking the subway, never going out to party, taking self-defense classes, wearing a burka,...) or ineffective (drawing a blank here, is there any victim blaming that is entirely ineffective?).
It is good if the self-protective behavior can be expected and is effective. "Don't get blackout drunk.", "Don't lead a guy on, then deny him at the end.", "Don't go out to party alone.", "Don't go home with a guy you have just met, especially when you are drunk.", etc. These are all perfectly reasonable things that we can expect from anyone without restricting their freedom much. If they don't follow these rules, they are probably not mature enough to be drinking or having sex in the first place. Even under the best of circumstances, you should follow these rules because there are always bad people around.
Then there is another category of advice that isn't tied to victim blaming. It's just good advice like "Communicate openly what you consent to and what not", "If someone does something sexual you don't want, verbally and physically fight back, don't freeze up." Here, it would not necessarily reduce my sympathy for someone, who didn't follow this advice, but it's still good advice.
Grauwacht
27d ago
Mostly because I find the word very funny. But you are right, I shortened it to just "slop".
Grauwacht
27d ago
This seems pretty much correct and is a staple for all of modern identity politics. You never blame the oppressed group, always the oppressor. You don't blame Blacks for underachieving, cultivating violent norms of behavior, reproducing in an unconscientious manner, etc. You don't blame gays for their sexual behavior when contracting HIV. And you don't blame women for getting blackout drunk when they had an unwanted sexual encounter. The main point is to wrestle power away from the oppressor towards the oppressed, never the other way around. That is the main purpose of identity politics, not solving the individual problem. Otherwise, the focus would be to a significant degree on the things that are already in the power for the oppressed to do.
Against the extermination of hard games
In this post, I argue against the extermination of hard video games, that is games that are hard to beat, even on the easiest difficulty setting. Those who wish to exterminate these games usually do so by broadly advocating for the implementation of easy modes. I deal with two main arguments, the "narrow liberal" argument and the argument from accessibility. The narrow liberal argument simply asserts that the inclusion of an easy mode does not harm those who wish to play on a harder setting. I refute this by showcasing advantages of unique difficulty settings. The argument from accessibility states that accessibility concerns should trump concerns regarding the enjoyability of the game. I show why this doesn't make sense. Lastly, I take a broader perspective and end up with the metapolitical implications of applying a "narrow" or "broad" liberal worldview.
Whenever FromSoftware releases a new game, a deluge of articles pour down demanding for an easy mode to be implemented. While, ostensibly, these articles are about FromSoft games, most of their arguments apply to any game. Furthermore, in none of these articles is it argued to implement easy modes only in certain types of games. Therefore, in this article, I will argue against the notion that every game should have an easy mode. Of course, I am not the first to do so. Youtuber Ratatoskr has, in my opinion, the best arguments against implementing easy modes in every game and I will draw in part from his work. However, I believe that his videos still don’t sufficiently express just how utterly wrong, egoistic, and exclusionary those are, who aim to exterminate hard games by arguing in favor of easy modes in all games. With “hard games” I mean games that are difficult to finish even for a seasoned player on the easiest available difficulty. In particular, I focus on the subset of games that have a unique and hard level of difficulty.
All articles arguing in favor of easy modes base their thesis on one central argument, which I dub the “narrow liberal argument”.
The narrow liberal argument
Implementing an easy mode does not hurt those who still wish to play at a harder difficulty level because the harder difficulty levels are still available. Nobody is taking anything away from you when implementing an easy mode and there are absolutely no downsides to it.
If this argument was true, the discussion would be essentially over. Unfortunately, it is completely wrong and disrespectful.
Why is it wrong? Even a single, small benefit of a unique difficulty setting is enough to prove the narrow liberal argument wrong. Here are some benefits that a unique difficulty setting provides, and that an easy mode would undermine:
It provides a sense of meaning to your struggles. When beating a challenge in a game like Sekiro, the reward is that you are able to progress through the game. Overcoming the difficulty has meaning because if you didn’t overcome the challenge, you could not have moved on. Conversely, if there was an easy mode, beating the challenge on “normal” only means that you did not have to lower the difficulty in order to overcome the challenge. It, thus, lowers the meaningfulness of your victory.
It provides a sense of unity and comradery. In Dark Souls you can literally see other peoples’ struggles against the exact same challenges that you face. This engenders a feeling of comradery against a common foe, which would be weakened if you couldn’t be sure that they aren’t facing a lesser challenge.
It provides a sense of identity for the game. It is no coincidence that discussions about difficulty always pop up around the release of FromSoft games. The unique difficulty setting has helped to create the identity of FromSoft games as “hard games”. Think of other “hard games”. How many of them have an easy mode? Having a strong identity, in turn, makes it easier for people to understand whether a game caters to their tastes. Everyone knows what to expect from the next FromSoft game. In some cases, the difficulty is the entire point of the game. For example, I wanna be the guy, QWOP, and getting over it are specifically designed to frustrate the player.
It provides a sense of pride when beating the game. The fact that some people cannot beat the game but you can, is a potential source of pride. If you enable everyone to beat the game, it is gone.
It saves on development time spent on balancing the game, which can be used on other areas. If the developers care about properly balancing all difficulty levels, this time save can be significant. If they don’t, which seems to be the usual case, the idea of implementing multiple difficulties is flawed in the first place. In the usual case of “easy/normal/hard”, normal is easy but hard means bullet sponge enemies and difficulty spikes. In some cases, it even ruins the game economy. I started out playing “ELEX” on ultra difficulty as an archer but had to quickly realize that killing enemies wasn’t worth it because I simply couldn’t afford the arrows to kill their bloated health totals. Thus, the difficulty setting didn’t provide a challenge for skilled players, it turned the game into a broken, unbalanced mess. There is no way this would have happened, had the developers balanced the difficulty around skilled players from the start.
It allows developers to generate their intended atmosphere more accurately. Some parts of games are meant to be hard to create an oppressive atmosphere. Others are meant to be easy to create a cathartic feeling in players. If there are multiple difficulty levels, a player may increase the level when the game is “too easy” and decrease it when it is “too hard”, thus undermining the developers intended atmosphere.
It provides commitment to a challenge. Hard games are oftentimes not that enjoyable to play in the moment but they provide more satisfaction when you finally beat them:
However, humans are impatient creatures who are prone to depriving themselves of long-term satisfaction for short-term enjoyment, e.g. by lowering the difficulty below what it needs to be. If you only have one difficulty setting available in the first place, this is impossible.
It provides peace of mind. In the beginning of a game with difficulty settings, you need to choose a setting without really knowing which one will be best for you. Maybe “hard” is good, maybe enemies are just bullet sponges. Don’t ask me what to pick, I’m here to play the game, not to design it! During the game, you are always faced with the choice of lowering or increasing the difficulty. With a unique difficulty setting, you don’t have to think in the back of your head that you could always lower the difficulty when struggling against a difficult boss. You simply have to…
…git gud. git gud means that there are some challenges that don’t scale to your level and that can’t be side-stepped. It represents the struggle of man to overcome his own limitations against all odds. Failing to git gud means to fail the archetypical struggle of humanity. It doesn’t matter that it’s unfair, it doesn’t matter that others are more privileged than you are. This is your challenge and you need to conquer it. However, if there is an easy mode, you no longer have to git gud. No longer gitting gud means that we lose a part of humanity itself. If you do not instinctively get what I am alluding to, you lack an essential aspect of humanity, sorry. Games are one of the last areas where git gud still applies in the West (another is love) and it does so with relatively low stakes. In the words of one our time’s foremost philosophers Fetusberry ‘Ass Bastard’ Crunch...
Grauwacht
1mo ago
That would be a lie because he didn't say that he has beaten his wife. It would not be a lie if it was "I have beaten my wife (in a video game)". But yeah, I would agree that at this level of "obscuration of the truth" there is little difference in the consequences between simply lying and being grossly misleading. Though we should not completely disregard the possibility that Joe actually thinks that Trump meant a real bloodbath (cf. dog whistling).
Here is an excerpt of what he said:
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/joe-scarborough-spots-trump-line-115751035.html
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Monday insisted Donald Trump meant his warning about a “bloodbath” in America if he’s not elected, despite the Trump campaign’s claims to the contrary he was only talking about the auto industry.
“It was a distinction without a difference,” said Scarborough.
What made it clear what GOP nominee Trump was intending to say, Scarborough continued, was when he added afterward that a “bloodbath” would “be the least of it.”
Scarborough explained, “If you think there’s going to be a bloodbath in the auto industry, even if you take that argument at face value, which, again, given the tone of the rest of the speech, ‘bloodbath’? I’m not sure he’s talking about the niceties of international trade. But let’s just take that argument as is. Then he goes on and he says, ‘That’s going to be the least of it,’ and repeats it. ‘It’s gonna be the least of it.’”
“Obviously, he’s talking about a bloodbath for America,” he added.
“It’s just bullshit,” Scarborough said of the Trump campaign’s spin that was parroted by other Republicans.
“I’ll say that at 6:15 a.m. It was bullshit,” he added.
Trump “knew what he was doing. We’re not stupid. Americans aren’t stupid,” Scarborough said. “He was talking about a bloodbath. Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath. And when he finishes by saying, ‘And that’s just going to be the least of it.’ Seriously? These people may be stupid, we’re not.”
This actually sounds like pretty genuine TDS. This is another thing I find amusing. The only people who seem to hear "dog whistles" are the ones who aren't supposed to her them.
Grauwacht
1mo ago
It seems to me that this is pretty squarely within the "technically the truth" category. It follows the same logic as the other examples of misleading headlines: If you had more context, you would interpret it completely differently.
Grauwacht
1mo ago
The mainstream media, which we're assured rarely tells [https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-lies](outright lies), decided to find the exact dividing line between an outright lie and "still technically the truth". You can be the judge of whether they succeeded. For just one of many examples, Joe Scarborough ran a segment where the words "Trump warns of a bloodbath for America if he loses" were emblazoned on the bottom of the screen.
I find it amusing that every time someone snarkily invokes Scott's post, they provide an example that perfectly makes his point. Trump did warn of a bloodbath, so Joe didn't make it up. The media is very, very, misleading but they indeed rarely lie.
Grauwacht
1mo ago
This study from 2018 claims that the Norwegian Flynn effect and its reversal can be explained by environmental factors: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115
What do our resident genetic experts think about this?
As I understand it, they look at the variation of IQ scores within families and test whether this variation can already explain the overall changes in IQ. The authors state:
Notably, if within-family variation fully recovers both the timing and magnitudes of the increase and decline of cohort ability scores in the data, this effectively disproves hypotheses requiring shifts in the composition of families having children. This set of disproved hypotheses would include dysgenic fertility and compositional change from immigration, the two main explanations proposed for recent negative Flynn effects (6, 7).
I suppose this is true if we assume that any within-family variation also impacts between-family variation to the same degree. But is this necessarily the case? The authors compare changes in the IQs of firstborn sons (between-family variation) with the changes between siblings (within-family variation):
What if parents at some point decided that they will put more of their effort and resources in their first-born instead of their future children? This might lead to an increase in IQ for first-born, i.e. a positive between-family effect, and a decrease in IQ for second-born, i.e. a negative within-family effect. Or what if mothers decide to get their second-born later in life? This would keep the IQ of the first-born constant, while maybe depressing the IQ of the second-born. If such an effect occurs, there could still be a role for genetic or migration effects in explaining the changes in between-family variation. My examples may be a bit ad-hoc and I'm not really arguing for them fullheartedly, but I am a little surprised that they would not discuss this.
I also wonder about their "selection correction" procedure. They do this because they are worried about selected attrition from the sample. Specifically, if a first-born has low IQ, this lowers the probability of the second-born to be in the data. If this selection gets stronger over time, this would hide some negative within-family variation. After they do their selection correction, the within-family data almost perfectly matches the between-family data. I find this a little sus but I don't have a real reason to distrust it. Is it kosher?
In a follow-up article they show that men with strong cognitive abilities have higher fertility than those with low cognitive abilities: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10300504/
Nothing bad really jumps out at me. It seems like in Norway between 1950 and 1990, there probably really wasn't much of a dysgenic or eugenic effect. Do we find something similar for other countries?
Bonus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10618866/
This is a commentary to the previous article. They argue that dysgenic fertility is not a scientific concept because it relies on the assumption that cognitive abilities are good. As a reason why cognitive abilities might be bad, they state that it has a positive relationship with Parkinson's and "victimization at work". I suppose that means that all of social science is not scientific. After all, how can you say that e.g. crime or poverty are bad? For example, criminals have higher rates of casual sex, which may be good. And people in poverty do less tax evasion, which is also good. Therefore, trying to reduce poverty and crime relies on value judgements and is therefore not scientific.
Grauwacht
1mo ago
It solves the problem insofar that an 18 year old having sex with a 17 year old is perfectly reasonable by anyone's standards but an 18 year old having sex with a mid teen is already pretty sus.
Does Germany abolish itself? https://grauwacht.substack.com/p/does-germany-abolish-itself
Schafft Deutschland sich ab? https://grauwacht.substack.com/p/schafft-deutschland-sich-ab
I analyze the latest PISA results to figure out why Germany's performance has declined so much in recent years. My focus is on figuring out the extend to which changes in migration patterns can explain the decline. I won't post the entire post here because it has a lot of figures and will be disjointed to read. Remember to subscribe!
Introduction
In 2010, the book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany Abolishes Itself) was created by Thilo Sarrazin. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Sarrazin's core thesis on the topic of education can be roughly summarized as follows:
-
The German birth rate is low, with less than 1.4 children per woman. This is contrasted by a large number of migrants, especially from Muslim countries, who have higher birth rates.
-
Many migrants have educational deficits compared to the German population.
-
Even after several generations, these migrants do not catch up with German society. This is due to genetic and cultural inheritance as well as little pressure to integrate.
-
In the long run, Germany’s educational achievements will deteriorate due to this demographic change.
Sarrazin's critics argued that he was right about some things, but that he painted too bleak a picture and mixed truths with falsehoods. They pointed out, for example, that there had been progress in the area of education among Turks, a large Muslim immigrant group. Against the background of the recently published PISA study, in which Germany performed miserably, it seems appropriate to re-examine Sarrazin's thesis. In particular, I will use the latest PISA study to answer the question of whether, and to what extent, migration aspects play a role in the continuous decline of German education...
Grauwacht
1mo ago
True, but I think we have to grade on a curve due to the "one-drop rule".
Grauwacht
1mo ago
There is a simple explanation as to why the White Nationalists are more tolerant than other groups: There is nothing to be gained by being White. You only give up any chance at getting Affirmative Action benefits as well as the amorphous social benefits that come with being part of a minority. In fact, the more Whites there are, the more the burdens of affirmative action are spread, whereas more minorities means that the benefits of AA are spread more thinly. The incentives to have strong or weak barriers to entry are obvious.
So there is a simple option to solve this whole issue: Stop discriminating against and debasing Whites. Stop giving tangible and intangible benefits to non-Whites. If there is nothing to be gained from being non-White, there is no point in having "hard-and-fast rules" and we can go back to "letting communities make decisions".
Also, a minor point:
"An 18.001 year old has a relationship with a 17.999 year old (who claimed to be 18) and is prosecuted for statutory rape."
There is a solution to that called Romeo and Juliet laws. They allow some age difference if both parties are close to the cutoff point.
Grauwacht
3mo ago
I don't think you are going far enough with the bathroom argument. If cis-men are dangerous to women, so are trans-women because both are male. Malicious actors don't need to factor into it. If we disallow cis-men from entering women's bathrooms, so should we disallow trans-women. Otherwise, it's discriminatory against cis-men.
Grauwacht
8mo ago
Suppose that we take an extreme example of this. If one person votes Blue, he dies. But if even one person joins him, nobody dies. I think even the most hardened Red would concede the case for picking Blue. After all, your risk is very low, since there's a very high chance someone else will join you.
On the other hand, the chances of actually saving anyone is small since enough people will vote for blue anyways. I don't think there is a single scenario, other than me being very concerned with the people I am trying to save, where I would pick blue.
Grauwacht
8mo ago
I pick red because I care more about not dying than I care about idiots and idiot-saviors not dying 🗿
Grauwacht
11mo ago
I'm probably preaching to the choir, but this is utterly backwards. The default is that men can't compete in women's sports. If you want to assert that some set of procedures the man undergoes makes it fair for them to compete, that is what has to be demonstrated. One study with n = 8 doesn't cut it. I'm sure that a wokeist would screech in rage that obviously transwomen are women, but such claims are just definitional assertions that are not-even-wrong and convey no information.
I think even this is too charitable. Imagine if we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that one-armed men perform the same in basketball as women. Should they be allowed to play in the WNBA? No... of course not, because they are men! They still had this advantage, it doesn't matter at all that they have some sort of compensating disadvantage, this is simply not how this works. The exact same thing is true for trans women.
Grauwacht
1yr ago
… to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political, or religious belief is inherently superior to any other race, sex, ethnicity, or belief.
I wonder what this means in practice. A lot of social, political, or religious beliefs are, in fact, inherently superior to others.
Grauwacht
1yr ago
Exactly, if it is bad, it must not work. See also this hilarious twitter thread in which Richard Dawkins tries to explain that eugenics would work:
https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/1228943686953664512
That's true, but the extend of the repression is simply not comparable between the West and Russia. If you are an influential person who opposes the status quo in Germany, you may have trouble getting a bank account, the media may lie about you, other parties may not want to cooperate with you, you may get expelled from the country if you are a foreign national, and the other parties may try to ban you. You can also go to jail if you express certain opinions, but this is relatively easy to avoid and doesn't hamper your political action much. This is all very bad. Conversely, if you are an influential person who opposes the status quo in Russia, you will get assassinated or put in the Gulag. Sometimes both. Further, the range of not expressible opinions is broad with unclear boundaries. Real opposition parties don't exist and elections are faked anyways.
More options
Context Copy link