ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
Use your mind! Create new memories! Interact! Don't just add it to a library of forgotten photographs! - Megatron
User ID: 2120
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
11mo ago
That was basically what I meant, with an exclusion for those demos whose victimization is framed as political. What I should have said is, there are any number of potential venues to pull off something like this. Doing it at a rally will guarantee that the collateral will be assumed as part of the motive whether it really was that thought-out or not.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
11mo ago
And the Trump political ads write themselves.
Even better than that, they've already been written. Trump has already branded "They're not after me, they're after you and I'm just in the way" as a slogan quite some time ago. If this shooter left a MAGA body at this rally then Trump is effectively president-elect. Bringing real political violence to a demographic that, habitually, has little experience with it will be catastrophic for Dems at the ballot (tautological but should be said).
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
11mo ago
My playtime for HD2 specifically is probably a 30/70 split between playing with my friend group and running randoms respectively, though I get your point about multiplayer games where the fun is dicking around with buddies. Lethal Company is a pretty good example of a cheap FOTM game that went wide and died off, not mechanically deep, complex or satisfying to play but it's great for a few weekend sessions with the gang.
I know people can get cranky when someone brings up "core gameplay loops" but if a game isn't at least enjoyable to interact with (in terms of controlling the character/player avatar in the gameworld) I'll drop it immediately. As the great Reggie Fils-Aimé once said, "If the game's not fun, why bother?". I would probably play HD2 from time to time even if the servers were shut down (don't think that's actually possible, thanks GAAS, so it goes) just because running around and shooting the guns feels good to me.
I also have a few coworkers who don't seem to understand, admitting they've played with a toy they don't like for hundreds of hours (or even better, bought into the ingame store) is telling on yourself. I genuinely think less of people who do that, they've shit up my hobby.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
11mo ago
My preferences are broadly opposed to yours, but I understand what you mean when you describe a satisfying 15 hr game. There is something very satisfying about a story that you can sit down and casually chomp through over the course of a handful of post-shift evenings. As someone with multiple 100hr+ games in his steam library though, I can't agree on the point with open worlds with only 15~hrs worth of content in them, again with an understanding of what you mean; the only AC game I ever played for more than fifteen minutes was some 2d sidescrolling Prince of Persia-esque sidestory for the DS, played out of a child's desperate boredom and not desire.
The majority of what's on offer from major studios for probably the last ten+ years has been dreck, almost without fail. Titanfall 2 was a rare exception to the AAA studio putting out a mediocre product at full-game prices, and it very predictably flopped as a result. As someone who autisticly gets into the systems of a game, and plays them for that satisfaction, the high end of mainstream vidya has been largely uninteresting and I have ignored it entirely as a result.
Helldivers 2, for all the strangely political discussion that's surrounded it, has been by far my most played game since its launch simply because I can see how much effort was put into these systems I get to exploit (rounds are modeled, counted and persistent in the mag/belt/cylinder/chamber, semi-volumetric ballistics for enemy armor, spalling while not modeled is simulated in the damage characteristics of each weapon, etc.). It was a small AA studio that put out an ambitious nearly decade-long project at an AA pricepoint and people loved it and then got bored and moved on. I've put in 400+ hours and have fun playing it still. We all get what we deserve.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
11mo ago
Your sub list has a good bit of overlap with mine, though I wonder if you'd agree with my opinion that Dillon has moderated quite a bit with his more recent success. His earlier work, up to and including the L.A. porch series was some of the best cultural critique of the 21st century IMHO. Still like his stuff, but he's mellowed now that owns multiple properties and he's not constantly afraid of losing the fleeting success he was clinging to, many such cases.
Any thoughts on lemon party, Ben Avery's podcast? I don't keep up with it seriously but for extremely online types I think it's been a real treat, close to a modern cumtown. Right on the edge of the politically unspeakable too, two of the regular hosts made an appearance on a podcast with Sam and Nick of MDE very recently (had a few fun clips dumped onto my homepage).
If something like a second American Civil War were to take place, my layman's estimation says it would almost certainly start in the next ten years if it happens at all. I could be wrong as tensions could yo-yo for longer than I, personally, might find sustainable but the population can accept.
As far as time to walk it all back goes, well. I think the American population has balkanized both further and for longer than most might admit or realize. The fractures within the major factions might prove to be the new political faultlines of whatever comes next, something like the death of the Whigs and subsequent rebirth of the Republican Party after the Civil War.
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