Rex
7d ago
I find it interesting to think about. It’s not just the politics though. Wolverine doesn’t seem to be an overly political game. It’s far more subtle with ugly character art and presenting Wolverine with feminine mannerisms vis a via Jean Gray. The game just obviously stinks and is designed for kindergarteners. Why is it so bad?
There are lots of people who suck at their job though. It almost seems as if they’re deliberately hiring untalented people. Or they’re hiring based on some criteria orthogonal to game development talent. You would think the market would correct this though. But it clearly hasn’t yet.
I fully expect this to continue. God of war lufy is likely going to be the next bomb. Naughty Dog’s Intergallactic is almost certain to bomb. The Last of Us 2 was controversial but sold well, likely because it was a sequel to a competent game. I’m pretty sure there will be Last Jedi effect going on with that one.
People talk about these big budget games being shit because big studios and publishers are risk adverse. That almost seems laughable to me. What could be more risky than continuing the stays quo?
Rex
7d ago
Why do you think they got bad at making games though? I’m going to guess it’s because the guys who made kotor and ME1 were a bunch of Gen X computer guys who loved early pc games and were incredibly talented. As the commercial success came and they grew exponentially, they hired a bunch of diverse young millennials and women that wanted to instagram their first day at BioWare. Then trump 2016 happened and it became a moral imperative to use their positions to fight the culture war.
This likely comes across as terribly racist and sexist. So be it. I’d love to hear other people theorize why suddenly all these great developers suddenly became bad at making video games.
I also agree it’s not just the politics that make these games suck. In fact it’s not even the primary thing that makes them suck. But I still blame politics since I suspect whatever is making them suck is downstream of politics.
My only other theory is that “video game designer” became a thing that people went to university to learn how to do right around this time. And all of a sudden there was a “right way” to design all these different game elements. And shockingly, this supposed “right way to do it” actually sucks.
Rex
7d ago
I’d love to hear your thoughts when you have time.
I also think Canada nationalizing BioWare would be the perfect clown world cherry on top of this cake.
Anyone interesting in talking about BioWare going kaput? It’s very much a culture war item. I have to think any honest broker would see this is a clear case of go woke/go broke. Andromeda, Anthem, and Veilgard were total disasters. Even if Anthem wasn’t overtly political like the other two, it’s clear that the company started hiring people that were not good at developing video games. It’s really remarkable since market theory should incentivize the exact opposite. But perhaps this closure is the market correcting and other developers will take note.
Separately, I couldn’t help but check in on Jason Schrier’s coverage. He released a YouTube video this week going over the closure. Early in the video he reminds the viewer that EA was recently taken private by Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner. Ah hah! I said to myself, that’s how he will spin this! And sure enough he gives a nuts and bolts overview of the poor sales over the years. And he spends an awful lot of time getting into the nitty gritty on leveraged buyouts and unreasonable meddling publishers.
I’ll remind everyone that when Veilgard came out, Jason posted “Go woke / go to the top of the charts?”. What a hilarious turn of events. The game literally killed the company. It would be funny except for the fact that I think a very large part of the blame for the state of the games industry can be laid at Mr Schriers feet. This guy does nothing but launder the industries perspective as fact and add credibility to the party line.
One thing you will see a lot on Reddit is people blaming publishers and corporate executives for bad releases that are total failures. I’m not one to defend these mercenary executives, but I think the actual rank and file game developers deserve the lions share of the blame. The executives can be blamed insofar as they are the ones making hiring decisions. But the actual developer and artist talent is bad. I’m glad they’re out of a job.
Rex
12d ago
I appreciate the perspective and it’s a good explanation for why we don’t expect paradigm changing physics to come from outside the official research/experimental channels.
I don’t think these prior should be so strong for advanced AI models. I’m sure mathematicians did not expect the avalanche of proofs that came out. And that they could have given very detailed explanations of why it wouldn’t happen.
I don’t know if GPT 6 or 7 will crack some novel physics. But i suppose I think it’s approaching more likely than not.
Rex
13d ago
I was hoping someone would post about this. I have a few reactions.
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Solving math problems is a fairly low risk way to demonstrate Ai models ability to solve these sorts of problems. I can’t be the only one to wonder: if it can solve obscure math problems, I wonder what it could do with physics? Apparently nothing really changes when you solve these 700 math problems. But if you solve 100 physics problems, you may wind up with some commercially valuable or dangerous tech. Seems unlikely they would dish it out so readily. People seem to have made this assumptions that we’ve hit the limits of new physics. Anyone claiming interesting effects or results is a crank and it’s all fantasy. Perhaps that assumption will hold up with AI, but perhaps not. It seems to me there’s a chance that the breakthroughs have already happened this year, but they haven’t been released yet.
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The reactions from many mathematicians have been a sight to behold. These sorts of intelligent academics truly behave like the world owes them something. By and large they are an unsympathetic bunch that I personally will enjoy watching them be made obsolete. There was one guy on Reddit, who turned out to be a young postdoc, giving the same tired routine that I see from so many of them. Bemoaning way that OpenAi released the work. Complaining that it’s a pile of papers that he will never read because it would take too long to digest and he’s got more important things to do. That perhaps if open Ai went through the proper channels and released peer reviewed articles in a real academic journal then, and only then, would the academic community accept the ideas. Maybe I’m generalizing too much from one guy, but I think this is a common refrain from these academic types.
I can’t wait to see how physicists react when the time comes.
Rex
14d ago
I see. I agree there. But I am very curious to see what sort of stunts they can do with this in terms of lap times on race tracks like the Nurburgring - where pulling 2g+ corners would be sort of mind boggling.
Rex
14d ago
Really? Cold gas thrusters on a car? I could be wrong, but is there anyone else who’s done this? Even as a personal side project? I would have guessed there are zero other companies that could design or install this tech, let alone program the software to invert a car and do a soft landing. Maybe another aerospace company could do it, but they haven’t. In the loosest definition, we have both cars and thrusters - but there’s something special about this.
Are the other auto companies that have found ways to radically change the traction equation?
Rex
16d ago
This is a movie that years ago I would have been excited for. I generally like commercial movies that trend towards the artsy side and have something interesting to say - as opposed to just mindless movie fun.
The problem is that I’ve been burned too much lately. I went into One Battle After Another with an open mind and as a big PTA fan. I don’t know what exactly it is, but I just can’t handle such heavy handed messaging and themes that I profoundly disagree with. There was a time where I could appreciate a thoughtful film for its artistry, despite the fact that it was messaging something I disagree with. Maybe the current crop of these movies are just less skillfully executing on the idea. Maybe it’s me - I have become more radicalized over the past 10 years.
Either way, I don’t even want to see Digger because the best case scenario is that I leave the theater, reflect on it, and find the whole thing distasteful. That’s what happened to me with OBAA. I was moderately entertained in the theater, but after reflecting on it for 5 minutes in the car on the way home I just kept thinking about all the things I didn’t like about the movie, what it was saying and the overwhelming critical praise it was getting.
Rex
19d ago
I mean this sincerely but I think we just have a very different definition of fun and we’re looking for different things in a game.
I need a game to be punishingly difficult and designed well enough to where I can practice and improve - sort of like golf. Mastery of a game.
Or I need a game that’s truly well designed and experiencing the interplay of systems is satisfying. I like building in games, all the way back to Sim City 2000. Valheim has a terrific building system where the pieces are small enough, clipable, and there’s a logical restrictions on weight/engineering. But if I’m given unlimited resources to build, and the building serves no functional purpose, I’m not satisfied. Valheim scratches that itch. Building is very functional. And at the same time you can get really flamboyant with the designs.
Enshrouded may have a great building system. But with no bare raids and no practical use (benches with craft from chest) , I am extremely bored by it.
So why do you play games? Is it just moment to moment fun? Second screen?
It’s an interesting discussion none the less.
It’s not a function of having time or not having time. I have 3 young kids and a demanding job. I have 2-3 hours of “me time” most days that I will sink into a good game. I’d rather spend 2 months making my way through Valheim than crossing new releases off my play list. Frankly, so few good and interesting games are released that I generally have a playlist of like 5-10 games I go back to. Very few of them are new releases.
I suppose it comes down to why you are playing video games. Seriously, why are you even playing Valheim? To cross it off a list? I’m sincerely asking.
Edit:
I fucking hate corpse runs. But fair enough that makes me not want to die. But that leads me to playing cautious and ultra boring all the time. I am absolutely not gonna risk a 50 minute meal count down on a risky and aggressive strategy.
Yes. There are consequences to death. And with no map, it’s much more likely your corpse and inventory is not getting recovered. But maybe if you remember where you were you can pull it off. You described combat as boring. It’s definitely not boring with those stakes. And playing defensively is typically a mistake. That’s what makes it interesting. It’s fully engaging. That’s why I think it’s a best in class. Literally the polar opposite of those new release slop games that play themself.
Rex
20d ago
Thanks. Great stuff. Particular RojoFern and his Mushroom Cloud video. I find it very interesting and cool that there are creators out there that can put together better documentary style videos than big television production studios.
I’ve always been a fan of nuclear weapons content. When I was a kid I got a copy of The Effects of Thermonuclear Weapons from a local university library. Loved it. I have a DVD somewhere that has most of the good public videos of famous Nuke tests.
But I can’t imagine a video like this being made professionally for Tv. It would be too niche. But somehow some random guy is able to do it. There are likely millions of examples of this on YouTube. That’s exactly what I’m trying to find.
Rex
20d ago
While I am always happy to hear people talk about Valheim, I disagree with many of your points. I find Valheim to be close to the platonic ideal of a survival game. People talk about video games as art and they generally are speaking of narrative and plot. I find the whole design of Valheim to be a superlative example of artistic expression.
Every part of the game has been carefully crafted and balanced around the the developers ideas and taste. Yes, the default setting are somewhat hardcore. There is friction. “Quality of Life” features are eschewed. The game is all the better for it and people should experience the game as they developers intend.
People also complain about the lack of “craft from chest” features. Or the limited inventory (somewhat relaxed in 1.0). People complain the developers are lazy and QoL like this should have been implemented years ago. It’s very clear at this point that it’s not a matter of prioritization, skill, or investment on the devs part. Those features fundamentally change the experience. Some people may be tuned off. Fine. But leaning into these features is what makes the game more of a pure survival game. Compared to every other generic slop/sandbox game. I find video games developers fairly loathsome. But I have supreme respect for Iron Gate for sticking to their guns and not giving the lowest common denominator NPCs what they want.
Compare Valheim to Enshrouded. A somewhat popular, perhaps more popular, survival game that is superficially very similar to Valheim. I found that game to be total trash. It’s got all the QoL that people ask for and more “fluid” combat. It’s also incredibly generic. No soul. I suspect most people would be lucky to get 50 hours of fun out of that game.
Valheim demands more. I’ve got like 500 hours on Valheim over the past 4 years. I am likely going to roll a new world and start fresh on no map, no portal (NMNP) settings. NMNP is an even more pure survival experience. Getting lost in the massive world is very possible. Get caught in a storm and get too far off course and you may never find your base again. No portal requires you to make a base in each new biome. It completely changes the dynamic and makes it much more fun in my experience.
Anyone who hasn’t played Valheim should give it a try. It’s not for everyone. But if you like spending time with games and being fully engaged, you may love it. It’s very different from the modern AAA slop that plays itself.
I enjoy YouTube far more than cable tv. There are a lot of great channels out there and I find the best ones are usually in the 2k to 30k subscriber range. Discovery is typically pretty hard and they will randomly show up in various recommendations. New videos typically come out every few weeks or months - not the daily slop from big channels.
Anyone have any recommendations?
I’ll share one. @josh_from_xboxlive.
https://youtube.com/@josh_from_xboxlive?si=j_AwTobz8Jn73lv7
I like it because while he ostensibly talks about film, books, and pop culture, he has some novel takes I have not seen elsewhere.
Highlights include What’s Wrong with Modern Horror, where he takes down this whole concept of “elevated horror” in films.
Writing as a Magical Praxis where he describes a nexus of tarot and storytelling. I knew nothing of tarot and he had an interesting thesis.
Also he has great playlist on “the Homer of the 20th Century” aka George Lucas. Very interesting analysis of Star Wars as a modern myth and the various thematic elements of the series. I have not seen these takes anywhere else.
Anyone else have any recommendations?
Rex
1mo ago
Can you point me to the YouTube videos. Sounds right up my alley. I like Nathan fielder but I’m not expert.
Rex
1mo ago
How about some television talk.
I was looking for a show to watch on a second screen while I played the new Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter and came across Slow Horses - BBC spy show about MI5 and a group of remedial agents. My parents have been watching for years and always recommend it. I loathe most modern television but for whatever reason decided to give it a shot.
It’s very much as expected. The first half of season 1 is all about a “loathsome” right wing terrorist cell, the Sons of Albion. Get this - these right wing youths kidnap an innocent British British-Asian boy and plan to behead him live on the internet in an ISIS style video. But wait, it’s actually a rouge opp carried out by the evil girlboss intelligence minister. They then do a double fakeout where the Sons of Albion get wise to the setup and the scary right wing guy goes on a rampage and attempts to carry out the beheading.
This is a completely ludicrous plot line and it appears that Apple’s Slow Horses is going to be every bit as awful as I expected for a show developed after 2016. Does Hollywood imagine there are actually these sort of right wing terror cells just waiting to activate? Despite all evidence to the contrary and dozens if not hundreds of other instances of racial and political violence perpetrated against white people? Or is the goal to get boomers all worked up about dangerous right wing ideologies. Are they stupid or liars?
For anyone here who’s watched it, does Slow Horses get better? Is there anything of value here?
I’m separately on season 4 of Le Bureau des Legendes - a French foreign intelligence tv drama produced by Canal and very highly regarded by anyone in the Anglosphere that’s seen it. It’s the show that Paramount’s The Agency is based on. And I must say the The Bureau is truly excellent. Season 1 aired in 2015 so it’s only mildly annoying with politics. Very mild. It’s really great and worth a watch if you haven’t seen it. I have a lot of thoughts on it that I can share if anyone is interested. But it reminds me a lot of 24, with less action and more drama.
Rex
2mo ago
Listen, I’m as big a Trump guy and MAGA guy as there is. I was first on the train back in 2015. Even if trump is right here, and he may be, this was was a complete and utter disaster due to the colossal waste of money, lives, and opportunity. In the beginning of ‘26 the economy was getting back on track, tariffs had no meaningful effect on economy, inflation cooling, lots of optimism. It all vanished. And this has been a complete waste of a year. Sadly he sold us out for Israel. I don’t know if I’ll forgive him, Israel, or the rest of the GOP neocons for it. Though admittedly 2 of the 3 were already on my shit list.
Who cares if Iran loses? I’m sure I could come up with 100 problems more important than Iran - pre and post war.
Rex
2mo ago
True in Texas. Not true in mid Atlantic and northeast. Sure we can just build things. We can also go to mars or cut Medicare and social security. But we’re not going to. For many many reasons.
And I’m not sure if you realize this, but increasing nameplate capacity 30% in 2 decades is absolutely awful.
Rex
2mo ago
It’s worse than environmentalists. If it was just that I’d have some hope. It’s the bureaucracy, regulation, cost disease, NIMBYism, and a general atrophy of industrial construction capacity.
Existing electricity price increases aren't correlated to data center builds
I don’t understand your point. Please elaborate. Evan assuming your point is accurate, I don’t think it matters.
You talked about how there has been no (little?) electricity price increase increase to date and that it’s only future price projections that have increased. I can assure you that when a power plant in 2026 is signing a 15-25 year power purchase agreement, those future energy price projections are the #1 thing they’re basing their price negotiations on. There’s a handful of companies that put out these projections and everyone makes long term financials decisions on them. The feedback loop on how these contracts affect the current price of power should be obvious, but I can elaborate if needed.
Rex
2mo ago
I work in energy (electricity) and this is part true and part untrue. Yes, electricity prices have gone up modestly, with bigger increases projected in the next 5 years.
The reasons prices are set to increase is that we are really slow to put new generation on the grid. And the amount of data centers under construction, let alone planned, is much bigger than what is already operational.
It’s a very simple supply and demand function. Load increases faster than supply. DCs buy power through PPA contracts directly with generators. But that crowds out offtake from the generators that would otherwise go to merchant markets or supply agreements with utilities.
We are average at best at building new power supply.
I expect retail electricity prices to be electoral politics by 2030, maybe even 2028.
Rex
2mo ago
some people have a psychological need for an enemy outgroup categorized by simple observable markers like skin color and gender, and furthermore that people who do this are inferior themselves
It occurs to me that there is a funny counter factual out there where people of different skin colors are really all nearly identical on all the measurable things that are supposed to matter (intelligence, crime, education, financial outcomes, hygiene, health, inhabiting clean a tidy communities, etc.) and then you have the racists making enemies of certain pigments. But then they would struggle to come up with any reason why they don’t like group besides the mere color of their skin. It would be rather ludicrous. I suppose there are a lot of people who do think that’s our current situation.
Is it really the skin color that people object to when they think about immigrants?
Rex
2mo ago
I tried to very carefully avoid consensus building by keeping it general. And it’s not a policy debate.
In my opinion, I find the behavior I described to be very rude (at the very least). I want to know what others think. And if they think it’s not rude, I’d certainly like to hear why not.
I don’t know how many economic migrants we have here on TheMotte, but perhaps if there is one here, they can share their experience.
Rex
2mo ago
I read a lot of science fiction for fun and there are a few concepts that I’ve read about for years that seem to become more clear in light of modern AI
Peter F Hamilton’s E-butler and U-shadow. The E butler concept was invented by Hamilton, I don’t know, 10-20 years ago? It’s essential a near future agentic AI helper that can interfere with the internet and accomplish any administrative task you throw at it. In Hamiltons world, planets have a “cyber sphere” or planetary network (internet). Cyber spheres aggregate to the Unisphere which is the civilization wide internet. The U shadow is essentially a far future digital “you” that lives in the Unisphere and does what you ask. The U Shadow is essentially a perfected Guardian Angel.
Hamiltons Commonwealth series is terrific and really presents a palatable if not optimistic view of how society could evolve and essential keep this free market liberal capitalism machine going for a few hundred years. Maybe it’s all the hours I’ve spent with these books, but the GA concept really intrigues me and I think it may be necessary to avoid a total distopia.
Separately, Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series has major trans human themes regarding digitizing people. There is a concept of “simulations” of people. Alpha level sims are perfect digital copies of a person developed though destructive scanning of a persons brain. Beta simulations are developed by observing every minute of a persons life and aggregating that data with an AI that learns and can perfectly predict a persons next thought or action. As it relates to GA or LLMs, if you had enough compute to have a GA shadow you for years, could it be possible that the LLM gets perfectly aligned to you?
Even writing all this out is bittersweet. It does seem somewhat obvious that these things are not impossible. Would a GA beta simulation perfectly replicate you? Maybe not, but it should would be a lot better than Claude. It strikes me that both government and corporations would fight all of this tooth and nail. Perhaps an open source path exists, but it seems really unlikely that it would ever get wide adoption. We will be funneled down the Claude path and it’s likely going to be total shit.
I think there’s some sample bias here. This is the prose that is amplified by institutional publishers and other gatekeepers. Of course they’re going to select this deranged and insane types of authors. A well-adjusted one wouldn’t get the time of day. Do you think they’re would ever give space to a normal woman with a healthy nuclear family? No chance.
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