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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3987 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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A soccer thought. I think it’s fair to say soccer is an inferior sport and us Americans are correct to not play it. However since it’s an inferior sports that’s also why you can have a World Cup.

Tiny nations could not put up a fight in America’s sports even if they played them at the same rate. You need to be a rich country to compete in American sports. For American football it’s probably only America that is richest enough to play it. It requires a huge amount of resources and technology to play at the highest levels. Even if the European powers played American football at the same rates I have my doubts they could create a team that’s competitive with a NFL team and we have 30 of them.

Baseball is showing some ability to create a few competitive national teams but baseball can’t be played internationally because of how much we’ve perfected pitching to the point that a human arm has limits on how many pitches it can throw a year. Elite arms can handle about 150 innings per year so there is basically no ability to use them for an offseason tournament.

And since Soccer is a low event sports it means that inferior teams can actually pull out ties or wins against power house teams with the right luck.

I think it's nice that the USA has its own little sports leagues where they can play with themselves and proudly announce they are World Champions in horseshoe pitching.

Everyone should have a hobby!

This is just cope. Polo is a more expensive sport to play by any standard and is also more involved and I'd wager, a superior gentleman's sport compared to the hooligan sport that gridiron football is. And yet the US is nowhere to be seen in the polo rankings and would get bodied by multiple developing countries were a match between national teams to be held.

Baseball is showing some ability to create a few competitive national teams but baseball can’t be played internationally because of how much we’ve perfected pitching to the point that a human arm has limits on how many pitches it can throw a year. Elite arms can handle about 150 innings per year so there is basically no ability to use them for an offseason tournament.

Baseball is undoubtedly an inferior sport to cricket, and the US national cricket team I guess would likely lose to Zimbabwe. Perhaps even Hong Kong.

I thought baseball was just rounders (a girls' school sport where I come from) with some frills?

Polo is a fantastic sport that should get more press and coverage. It's incredibly entertaining, more effectively co-ed than any more legitimate sporting event, it has the crash-danger of NASCAR and the player-hotness of Italian soccer.

The patron (team owner) often plays on the team itself, which is achieved by the polo equivalent of a salary cap: the handicap system, by which players are rated in goal-value from -1 to 10, and then the team has a budget of handicaps it can spend. As a result, if a team has one of the Argentine star 10 handicaps on the team, you need to balance it by grabbing somebody who sucks with a 1 handicap. So you get a 55 year old investment banker trying to play a real professional sport on a team with real professionals.

Plus, in America at least, the tickets cost almost nothing and they encourage you to tailgate right on the side of the field! In Newport, $150 gets you 20 people, a tent set up for you, and a place to park your truck. Bring your own food, and the drinks there are strong and delicious and reasonably priced.

the US national cricket team I guess would likely lose to Zimbabwe. Perhaps even Hong Kong.

It made minor news a couple years ago (2024) when the US team beat Pakistan (generally one of the top teams). Of course, the usual suspects noted that most of the team was first or second generation South Asian immigrants.

Ah, that was an extremely embarassing thing and a one off black mark to be forgotten. Pakistan are known for being mercurial, one day they make easy pickings of the world champions and then a week later look like they're all on some drug and lose to a much worse team.

So last year I was at a town meeting for my little burgh. And the audience is full of Indians, like twenty or thirty Indian guys of all ages, when the typical public audience of people not involved is like me and two boomers. And I'm thinking, oh, there must be a motel or a gas station up for a zoning exception and his friends came in to support him. But they work through the agenda and the Indians don't stand up for anything. And I start thinking, oh no, they're all here together for the courtesy of the floor at the end, something bad must have happened, I bet something racist must have occurred and they're here to complain about it.

And the end of the meeting comes and the public comment, and sure enough their spokesman gets up and walks to the podium, and says: "We are all here as part of the [Region of PA] Cricket Club, and we are here to ask for a cricket field to be built in one of [municipality's] parks for the use of all the cricket players in [Region] who currently have to travel to New Jersey to play on a proper cricket field."

Inferior to what? Team sports do not excite me usually, especially very long team sports (I barely have patience for basketball, anything longer is a nope, maybe highlights only). But I assume by "American sports" you mean egghand, which Americans insist to calling "football" to piss off Europeans (a noble goal, but doesn't make it make sense) and baseball? The latter is so boring that it should come with a warning label "may cause prolonged coma, do not attempt without medical supervision", while the former is more exciting, to the point it looks like a bar brawl but without the fun parts like alcohol and singing. Of these three, football (which Americans in line with the Good Ole England tradition long abandoned by the English call "soccer") is the most entertaining, and this is very well confirmed by the experience. Games like baseball or rugby exist everywhere, and they have some popularity, but you would find orders of magnitude more kids (or amateur adults) playing football than any of them. The market has passed its verdict.

I don’t believe the market has passed its verdict. There is a first mover advantage in sports and soccer spread first so a lot of its popularity is because people grew up with soccer.

But part of my argument for soccer being inferior would still fit in under your market test. Other countries are in fact poorer than America and soccer is cheaper to play and be internationally competitive than Americas leading sports. You can reasonably say soccer is more popular elsewhere because they are poorer.

There is a first mover advantage in sports and soccer spread first

Modern football rules were finalized in mid-19th century. Rugby rules were finalized at the same time. Baseball became popular in US at the same time. There was no "first". Of course, all of those games had historical precursors reaching into the ancient times, but whatever criteria do you use, it is not possible to establish one was "first".

Other countries are in fact poorer than America

Assuming they are (though that would be highly dependent on definition of "poorer" - by GDP per capita both Norway and Switzerland beat the US) I am not sure what this has to do with anything. Rugby is not much cheaper to play than football (if you don't count medical bills of course).

You can reasonably say soccer is more popular elsewhere because they are poorer.

No, not reasonably, Vast majority of players do not play it as high-stakes competition, any they very well can afford the basic equipment and training, They just don't seem to want to. Netherlands may be slightly below US by the GDP per capita, but it doesn't mean they can't afford a baseball bat or an egg-shaped ball. So no, it's not popular because they don't want to play it, not because they can't afford to.

Modern football rules were finalized in mid-19th century. Rugby rules were finalized at the same time. Baseball became popular in US at the same time. There was no "first". Of course, all of those games had historical precursors reaching into the ancient times, but whatever criteria do you use, it is not possible to establish one was "first".

Cricket was formalised almost a century before any of the foot ball or base ball games, with the first printed law book appearing in 1755 and the MCC being founded in 1787. So it is clear which one was first, and it hasn't exactly won.

Actually soccer, rugby, and cricket spread out from England at about the same time, but soccer got the widest adoption and displaced the others, in both rich and poor countries alike. Rugby and its descendants(like American and Canadian football, or Australian rules football) are dominant in most anglosphere colonies, but not in Britain itself.

Soccer is an awesome sport. It has rules that are simple enough that everyone can understand them- but at the same time, they don't let everyone get away with murder. It's not highly scripted. It isn't a sport that rewards sheer mass over athleticism. Anyone except the wheelchair bound can play, anywhere, anytime. It's the world's sport for a reason, it beat out rugby and cricket for a reason.

Tiny nations could not put up a fight in America’s sports even if they played them at the same rate.

Tiny nations do, however, do this. The rugby powers could field good American Football teams if they wanted to, probably quite quickly. Plenty of small european countries already field good basketball teams- Serbia actually pushed the US to the brink for olympic gold. And Latin American baseball players are extremely common.

Soccer is an awesome sport. It has rules that are simple enough that everyone can understand them- but at the same time, they don't let everyone get away with murder.

Except offsides, which will never be understood or make sense.

So why does nobody else care for American Football? Are the other nations so inferior that they don't even see its greatness?

(Is American exceptionalism going the way of Japan now, from "we are so great everyone wants to be us" to "we are so great nobody gets us"?)

I think it would fair to say that other countries don’t play American Football because they can’t afford to so I guess that could be considered as them being inferior.

Soccer is a solid middle income country game. It’s why Argentina can be very good. France had the most players in the World Cup and it’s largely because Africa appears to be too poor to train their players domestically.

What nationalities are the coaches? It could also be a coaching issue.

I think it would fair to say that other countries don’t play American Football because they can’t afford to so I guess that could be considered as them being inferior.

I am at least curious to see what happens with the inclusion of Olympic (flag) football for 2028. One of the benefits of being host country is influence over choosing demonstration sports -- baseball/softball is also coming back like it did in Tokyo. It looks like the NFL (and CFL) will allow their athletes to play in the games, but of course flag is a very different game: unclear if NFL players would dominate like the NBA Dream Team. IMO it is a variant more likely to sell as a viable sport internationally. It looks like cricket, squash, and lacrosse will also make an appearance, but breakdancing isn't coming back.

There are lots of countries that are wealthy enough to play American Football- but soccer got to Africa from France, not the other way around.

I think arguably Europe is too poor to compete in football. And it’s not just a pure GDP. You probably do need an entire region dominated by the sport let’s call it 50 million people minimally to start to have filters big enough to have professional leagues (college football is probably fair to call professional). To play top level football you may need to have integrated black populations for for wide receiver, cb, and rb positions. It’s the one area where diversity is our strength makes some sense.

And then you need the more direct wealth of being able to pay for 20 coaches per side since you need a lot of coaches because there are 4 types of players (throwers, fast guys, big guys, kickers) plus guys who are mixtures. Sporting equipment is expensive for the game. You likely need emergency medicine to a greater extent.

The counter on why some countries play certain sports is basically a network effect argument. It’s more fun to play games that a lot of other people play so nations tend to keep playing the same games even if its sub-optimal.

The American mind wants to think that it’s our black athletes that would take over soccer because of superior fast twitch muscles, but Kickers and punters are like 98% white and Internationally soccers best players are at a minimum half white.

There are more than a few European nations where rugby is reasonably popular, no? Why would American football be that different? And it already fills the "big guys colliding into each other" niche of team sports for a lot of folks, lessening the chances of American football being adopted in a major way.

American football is ludicrously more expensive and has more specialized players. But typically rugby(and Canadian football) players find more success slotting into American football teams than the reverse, and I struggle to believe that high income countries can’t afford to build NFL teams.

But the other thing to point out is that the NFL is not, primarily, a sporting organization, it’s an entertainment platform. A limited number of teams isn’t going to expand, because the NFL’s success formula is celebrities+tabloid fodder+a big show that’s easy to televise- and thats a lot harder to replicate. Hardcore sports fans in the US are pivoting away from the NFL and towards things like hockey and soccer(college football is also huge, but it’s a class/cultural phenomenon).

Tua, for all his flaws and failures on the biggest stage, is pretty much a disproof that Samoans can't produce a QB. He might not have been able to stick around as a top-10 QB, but he played at the highest levels and lead the league in yards one season.

Ditto your theory that HBD dictates black players are necessary for RB/WR/CB, where some of the best players of the past decade are McCaffrey, Kupp, and Dejean.

I think what really makes American Football expensive is a need to have multiple development platforms for training specialized position groups. You need to be rich, big population, and potentially even diverse. American Samoa and Hawaii can produce some interesting players likely due to some genetics that are good for American football but could they produce a full team. I’m not sure they could produce a higher end QB or kicker which would leave flaws on their roster.

American football is expensive but it’s within the realm of what Western Europe could afford- after all it took off in America when we were a lot poorer than they are now. Could Europeans fill out a full team? Probably, a number of those countries are very competitive across a range of different sports.

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It's not really American football vs soccer. The reality is that, if you haven't grown up watching either rugby or American football, and then you were exposed to both, you'd never choose the latter as a viewing experience. The rest of the world has their own version of American football, but more free-flowing, more naturally physical, and less advertisercucked. Even the Japanese play rugby.

Even Rugby Union is the superior sport to gridiron football (all variants).

What do you mean by "even"? Rugby Union is a fantastic sport.

Personally I prefer League (to watch, wouldn't want to personally play either) but yes I'd agree Rugby Union is still a very good sport to watch.

The Count hails from one of the few British colonies where rugby never took off. (Canadian rugby evolved into a game which is more like American football). So I expect he is comparing it unfavourably to cricket and (field) hockey.

If he is advocating Rugby League as the superior game, I will be surprised as he appears to be neither a chippy northerner nor an antipodean. I do think League would be a better gateway drug for converting gridiron fans to following a real sport.

Interestingly, a lot of the spread of Rugby Union beyond the Commonwealth is driven by a great many cultures having a traditional sport involving trying to advance a held "ball" over the try line while the opposition try to physically take it from you, and World Rugby is good at finding them and saying "this is the international version of the sport you are already playing - why don't you adjust your tactics to our rules so you can compete internationally".

League is the better sport to watch, as in union so much of the action happens underfoot.

Uh, isn’t non-commonwealth rugby Union mostly in countries with very heavy British influence to begin with?

Even the Japanese play rugby.

When I last visited Japan I took some pictures out of a Shinkansen of kids playing in a field, and only later realized they were playing American Football from the ball and formations (the train was moving too fast to tell at the time). The Internet tells me it is played there at least a bit, and there is even a professional league. I was surprised, but it's also possible I found the local American expat school.

American Football is a very different sport. This is important to the appeal! In my mind Rugby is just a shittier version of soccer, that's reductive but it is true that sports like Hockey, Rugby and Soccer scratch similar itches with free flowing gameplay as an example feature. Tennis, Golf, American Football - these are all very different experiences.

An example of what this means practically - Football is chess, in the sense that the pieces have abilities but really it's all about the person moving the pieces (the coach) making choices. Football is a coaching battle and a roster construction battle. Yes your coach and roster matters in the other team sports but football is a bunch of different players basically playing an entirely different game (on the level of the difference between a goalkeeper and everyone else) but for every different position on the field.

It's crazy intricate and complicated.

As much as I want to call soccer an inferior sport which I believe is true; I also like that it exists. And that it slot in somewhere around Sport 4 or 5 in America.

It has two greats features. The endurance test of soccer and players actually becoming tired is kind of cool. And while I think being a feet only sport is inferior since the upper body is a significant component of fitness that also allows it to select for athletes without the same emphasis on pure physical size.

The two are related. Almost every Big Guy soccer player is perennially injured - the torque that big muscles or even a big frame puts on your joints really adds up over the levels of sustained work that a soccer player's body is expected to put in just to be competitive. The only exception is the old-fashioned big striker who hangs out up front and doesn't run all that much except to try and score a goal, and those are only fielded by low-ranked teams.

I find them both beautiful, but for different ways!

I suppose so. Though there's a lot of coaching and player specialization involved in other sports, it's just the most extreme in American football because there isn't the need for players to fill other roles (even in cricket, you occasionally get the equivalent of your big guy needing to kick a field goal). Do you feel that the emphasis in ultra-specializing players physically is good or bad for that chess-style of watching?

Personally, I simply cannot understand the appeal of a sport where you sit around watching largely unimportant nonsense for almost all the time in the hope of catching 30 seconds of action - I already have my girlfriend for that.

Football is the most war simulator sport or in modern terms - Football is like Fire Emblem.

It's turn based. You go and then they go. Your units perform an action their units defend against that action. Your units have stamina, you rotate them throughout the game, some hero units need to be in for the whole game.

Understanding your units and the strategies that work well for them (and how they relate to the enemy units and their strategies) is critical.

Football more than most sports (with perhaps the exception of pitching in baseball) requires strategy, tactics, and "logistics" - roster building is fair and open (because of the salary cap) and unit selection and resource management is critical because even a dozen games at the tempo of one per week is too much for most human bodies. Basketball load management is trivial in comparison.

This complexity really rewards high level fan engagement, I know a guy who got a summer job out of emailing an essay on a bad game plan to one of the major NFL teams.

On the other hand without the higher level of knowledge it's pretty enjoyable, most partners I've had in my lifetime who are sports avoidant have gotten more into American Football - the attack and then defend structure makes it more understandable than a lot of Soccer for instance. I love watching the gradual grinding down of a defense or Spain midfield control but it isn't as enjoyable to casuals.

As you note the action is limited to a short span, but you know exactly when that span is, leaving the rest of the time for celebration, drinking, and chitchat. It's a much better on the background at a party sport, you can easily miss the only true action of a soccer game if you piss for thirty seconds.

Interesting, in my experience watching American football I'm basically unable to tell when the action will resume in a given space of milling around. I assume you pick that up fairly quickly.

In my experience, women go for soccer very quickly, but they only remember the good-looking players (I have an American friend who still occasionally asks about Olivier Giroud) or the villains of a given team. It's easier for sports-agnostic women to experience sports as personal drama between men - see also the explosion of F1 interest.

I think the connection to baseball is a meaningful one, even if cricket is probably closer than baseball to the abstract idea of American football you're portraying. American sports are, generally, optimized for ultra-intense fan engagement with lots of statistics, whereas old-world sports tend more towards "may the best man win, old chap" with relatively less structure around that. Personally, I sort of appreciate that the stats wonks in soccer aren't really that useful, but it also means that there's very little to actually think about beyond watching the games and scouting transfers. Tactics are incredibly important to a team, but you've discussed them to death by Monday.

I can see the Fire Emblem metaphor, though I think the "war simulator" thing has been tortured to death (I could also give a spiel on how soccer and rugby are closer to small-unit infantry tactics - let alone that soccer fans engage in much closer activities to war than any professional athlete...) and we should accept that the war-related psychological inheritances that sport activates in us have almost nothing to do with what happens on the pitch.

Yeah you get the tempo pretty quickly (and you have an actual play clock that tells you when you have to go by).

You'd think so but the major lesson from the World Cup was that bitches over here love Haaland (because he's goofy). America football players offer more of a variety of good looking men (because each position requires a different body type) and the outfits show off the gents butts more. Both have sex appeal lol.

I love Soccer's evasion of stats and rules loose nature. I also love American sports nitty gritty and optimizable nature. Just as I suggest to Americans to enjoy the looseness of Soccer I think Football also has some value for things in the other direction.

So it's interesting, I think American Football most resembles a war simulator, European Football most resembles an actual fight. The simulator makes some things clear and explicit. Things have to happen, ambiguity is artificially reduced. People take turns slugging each other in the face. In contrast you have a free flowing game where nobody wants to get punched in the face, you push and pull, ebb and flow until you can safely strike without cost - or something slips up and things happen quickly. Things are rarely clear. Sometimes it just ends when it ends vs. goes on forever etc etc.

I bring this up not to explain which most resembles the territory, but point to which map is on display. You can enjoy both stylized maps without ever having seen the territory.

I think it’s fair to say soccer is an inferior sport

I'll bite: how're you defining "inferior"?

I think I’ve seen three argument for why it’s inferior.

  1. The better team should win the game more consistently. I saw some data today that soccer has the lowest % chance of favored team winning the game. Upsets do make sports more enjoyable but in soccer the outcome is too heavily on random luck versus ability. You also see this with like Cape Verde being able to draw powerhouse teams which shouldn’t happen in a better game.

  2. The game doesn’t utilize the human upper body. A good game some how incorporates an athletes upper body. It’s literally half the human body.

  3. All sports some how mimic war. Soccer has the least application to war of any sport. We don’t have any weapons that involve kicking stuff. This is sort of similar to not using the upper body. But in war we throw stones, spears, arrows, etc which most other sports mimic in some way. War had a lot of hand to hand combat.

Come to think of it, there's something somewhat anti-humanist about soccer's no hands rule. Being able to accurately throw things is kind of humanity's whole thing (beyond language/complex social structure). If we were a video game class, it would be our special racial skill. Kicking is beta prey animal shit.

(Soccer fans, please note this is tongue-in-cheek. I've enjoyed watching the world cup. I like your game)

If we were a video game class, it would be our special racial skill.

Not IQ?!!?!? What?!?!?? Or communication?!?!?!? Throwing things? Really?

I don't want to downplay how OP we are at throwing things but I'm not typing this comment on a thrown projectile lol

Imagine a video game where there are multiple sentient species, like a space opera.

In a space opera I'm really hoping we're leveraging our IQ and coordination abilities, not rock throwing at their laseguns

In a space opera everyone is presumably smart enough to have achieved interstellar spaceflight. And coordination? Humanity has famously never been united under a single government. If all other aliens come from "planets of hats", as is tradition, it will be hard to explain how humans are better at coordination than them.

It's quite unclear how bat and racket sports mimic war, or why we should care either way.

Range weapons. The ability to control a projectile and maximize its speed to kill your enemy.

The purpose of sports is to practice war.

The fact that the team with the best stats can easily lose in soccer makes it more similar to war.

That's actually not true- the handful of sports whose ancestors were clearly documented functioned as a substitution for war. A lacrosse match substituted for a battle.

I'm not aware of any range weapons which work on projectiles thrown at you by the enemy. In fact, I'm not aware of any range weapons that are used with bat or racket like implements at all. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

The purpose of sports is to practice war.

Citation, uh, needed.

You also see this with like Cape Verde being able to draw powerhouse teams which shouldn’t happen in a better game.

If it were "too much luck in football compared to other sports" then they wouldn't be able to do it every damn game. Cape Verde fielded a good team, and their results reflect that.

Also, there just aren't sports where a single match selects the best team from two world-class teams with a reasonable degree of reliability. Pro baseball and basketball both use multi-game series in their playoffs, and the best-of-1 single-elimination format of the NCAA basketball playoffs produces so many upsets that you call it "March Madness".

All sports some how mimic war. Soccer has the least application to war of any sport.

You clearly haven't met European football fans.

I agree. The perfect sport is one where both teams show up to the pitch, the computer decides who is better, and the victory is awarded to the superior team. You don't even need to get your cleats dirty.

I get your sarcasm but in sports there is a line between matchup decided between “random number generator” and “better team wins”. The ideal game has a balance between the two. Soccer I think is probably a little closer to “random number generator” chooses winner. I feel like Spain absolutely dominated that game and it was almost a tie. That’s not a good outcome.

In fairness, Spain had 12 goals blocked, which only happened because Argentina has the best keeper in the world.

In fairness too Spain did not shoot well. They had a lot of shots but I didn’t record Martinez making a great save. It felt like all the shots were right at him. But in general what’s the conversion rate from shot to goal - 15%? Which is an 11% chance the game draws. Maybe that’s too high?

Hockey and baseball have a similar issue and they deal with it by playing 7 game series.

And yet, after drawing with Cape Verde, Spain won the tournament, holding the world champions to a single shot. The nature of football is that it evens out over the course of a campaign, without being boringly predictable. (Also, with regard to your second point, football players use their upper bodies a ton when competing for the ball - to keep balance, hold space, know where the other player is, control their movements, etc. You don't notice it, because it only becomes really obvious to a new viewer when it turns into a foul. There's a reason the players don't look like cyclists).

There's other ways in which sports can suck though.

  1. Players do things that barely relate to one another. This is the reason Quiddich in Harry Potter is a stupid idea from someone who probably doesn't understand sports as a concept. But baseball also does it; the pitcher, the batter, the basemen, the fielders do things that outside of the direct level of ball itself, barely have anything to do with one another. Sure, the pitcher is is in direct opposition to the batter, but how does the pitcher affect the fielders?

  2. The sport is so optimized that large parts of the intended spectacle have become irrelevant. I don't know much about basketball but from what I hear people saying, that's its state now.

  3. Having so many players that are focussed on only one physical aspect because that's the only thing that's asked of them. Baseball and american football do that. In american football, you got your QB that's usually fairly well rounded, then you get a mix of big mofos and sprightly gazelles. In baseball it seems at this point all that people care about is pitchers (and star batters; I know, they play a position on defense, but that's just to keep them busy).

(3) is why I think NFL is the game of games. Sports are basically practicing war. Football is most like modern combined warfare where completely different weapons and systems need to work together to accomplish a goal and no one system can be as powerful as combining different systems working together.

Football has a lot of specialization that can fit the elites of different body types.

A country in war would not be good at war if they were really good at making tanks but didn’t know how to make a plane. Similar a country really good at producing fast gazelle running people but bad at producing big strong guys would lose to a country that can produce gazelles and strong guys.

Sure, the pitcher is is in direct opposition to the batter, but how does the pitcher affect the fielders?

By choosing his pitches to the batter in an attempt to get the batter to hit in such a way that it's easier to field or will lead to a double play.

This is the reason Quiddich in Harry Potter is a stupid idea from someone who probably doesn't understand sports as a concept.

I recall that JKR intended the snitch as a satire of this exact problem with penalties in Soccer, which have such outsize impacts on the game that you can play the entire game and have it all be irrelevant because of a single play.

And then people unfamiliar with sports tried to make quidditch real, giving ammunition to ‘JKR made a fictional sport, not a real one’.

College Quidditch teams are just the latest in a long line of "upper class white kids invent a new sport because they like playing sports but aren't very good at the existing ones." This is essentially the entire history of most modern organized sport, actually. Soccer, college football, marquess of quensbury boxing rules, BJJ, Rugby, marathon running. All originate in their modern form in the search by upper class white kids for an athletic outlet that isn't already dominated by the lower classes.

If they aren’t good at playing sports I don’t believe it’s because upper class kids are worse at playing sports than lower class kids. But you have a lot more lower class kids so even if the lower class on average produces half as many great athletes per capita their share numbers mean they will dominate.

I think it’s likely true that on average upper class kids are taller than lower class kids and intellect does matter more than people like to admit in sports so upper class kids should be producing at a higher % athletes.

But true elite athletes are still a small % of elites that you would still want to create new games you can be the best at.

It's not that upper class kids are, on an individual basis, bad at sports, that's neither necessary nor sufficient for the argument.

It's that people recognize, implicitly, the various advantages from playing sports, but individual kids aren't all good enough to play at a high level. Playing sports in an academic setting is good, has numerous social and physical and credentialist benefits. It's good for your body, your mind, your ego, your social life. But if you can't make the team in high school or college, you often don't even get to play, and even if you do play casually you're strictly inferior to the players on the varsity squad.

College quidditch (and rock climbing and historically lacrosse and ultimate frisbee etc...) is the lindy form of college athletics: a bunch of students forming a club and creating rules to hang out and play sports, and eventually organizing games against other schools until it builds enough to be a real tournament sport.

It's finding an outlet to express your athleticism when the ordinary forms of athletics that already exist are closed to you.

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This seems off. Both association football and rugby come from an attempt to write down the rules of the folk "football" games, which were played by boys and young men of all classes, to support organised inter-school play, and the The Marquess of Queensbury is obviously trying to do the same thing for a different pre-existing sport.

Marathon running was invented by a French academic in order to provide an on-theme marquee event for the first modern Olympics.

Both association football and rugby come from an attempt to write down the rules of the folk "football" games, which were played by boys and young men of all classes,

All the forms of football (Association, Rugby, Gridiron) were originally called "football" because they were played on foot rather than because you kick the ball. ((Hence the stupidity of the "handegg" sneer))

Prior to the emergence and dominance of the various Footballs, when we talked about sport and sportsmanship, we were largely talking about aristocratic pastimes: horses, hunting, hunting on horses. Football was played on foot, as opposed to the Sport of Kings, Polo. Horse sports require both a lot of money, for the horses, and access to a lot of land. They're unavailable to the urban professional class.

The urban professional classes had a rising sense of their own importance and wanted to demonstrate their athleticism, but they didn't have horse-and-land money, they needed something accessible. This shows us the contrast that they were part of building: the upper class students at British boarding schools or American colleges were upper class, but not Aristocrats, they weren't as capable of participating in the existing cultures of sportsmanship at the time, which were oriented around horsemanship and hunting. So they elevated these townsfolk games, codified them, and made them into something socially valuable in which they could participate.

For Soccer in America, the same dynamic actually recurs in the 90s, when Soccer emerges in America as an athletic alternative to the dominance of football and basketball. The "Soccer-mom" term of the 90s didn't just refer to a mom, it referred to a suburban upper-middle class white mom. Why did her kid play soccer and not football or basketball? Football was too violent, basketball too "urban," (I mean everyone knows white men can't jump). Soccer emerged as a youth sports alternative that was less violent, classier, more European, but most importantly it was just a sport that poor kids and black kids didn't play. This is reflected in the fan dynamic, being a fan of European soccer leagues has long been a blue-tribe coded kind of sports fandom, a sports hipsterdom that allowed not just the players but the fans could sneer at American sports. This dynamic is how we wound up with the "pay-to-play" model that everyone involved with American Soccer has been kvetching about since the World Cup, but people don't understand how it came to be.

Marathon running, long distance running, jogging, are all popular in America primarily as and because they are upper-middle class pastimes. It's got huge advantages as a status-class marker: no contact, solo, primarily about discipline and determination rather than talent, historically finishing is the primary status symbol rather than winning. No large law firm or investment bank lacks a Marathon-Guy since the jogging craze of the 80s; while historically few law firms have a powerlifter or a wrestler (though Crossfit and BJJ might have changed this by now). You can't walk through an office in Boston leading up to April and not hear about someone training for the Marathon, I've never walked through a law firm in Boston and heard about partners training for the Mass state USAPL. You can see this dynamic in long distance running continue as the popular distances have extended, ultramarathons are the new marathons, because the ultras are still competitive for upper-class white boys with discipline and character, rather than the province of professional Kenyans. Finishing an ultra is still worth more than comparing times because so few people run them at all. Sport exists, is popularized by upper-middle class whites, comes to be dominated by other groups as the prestige of the event grows, upper-middle class whites move on to a new sport to enjoy as a pastime.

Jogging craze among yuppies => NYC and Boston Marathons become prestige events => Kenyans come to dominate the major marathons because prestige means monetary reward => yuppies start talking about ultramarathons.

White kids at old Ivy League schools invent modern football(s) as an interscholastic pastime => football becomes a national professional sport with teams at every high school and a path to riches => poor kids dominate the sport because they see it as a path to scholarships and money => white kids at old ivy league schools discover Soccer, Lacrosse, etc and develop those into interscholastic pastimes

This is too long already, so I'll just cede that the Marquess of Queensbury was a slightly different dynamic and I'm a little wrong on that one.

College quidditch is also notable for being ridiculous and inane as a sport. They run around with brooms held between their legs, even.

Like ultimate frisbee is not that.

Yes but the inanity is what keeps athletic kids who can play a different sport out of it. It's similar to the comment I've seen that Juggalo culture is one of the last real subcultures remaining because it is so off-putting that it is difficult for the Sociopaths to push out the Geeks and the MOPs aren't interested.

Unfortunately the readers seemed not to notice, tried to implement it as literally as possible, and the grouching comes from HPMOR!Harry and his big flashing BUY A CLOCK sign.

In American football, you've got your quarterback that's usually fairly well rounded, then you get a mix of big mofos and sprightly gazelles.

Compare the old system of one-platoon/ironman football, under which substitutions were strictly limited and therefore all players had to be competent both on offense and on defense. Presumably, the replacement of this system with unlimited substitution and two or three totally separate platoons of players has contributed to the specialization of players in the modern day.

There is a critical flaw that competitive games need to avoid: a competitor or team purposefully running out the clock rather than trying to play. Such as passing the ball back and forth with no serious attempt to advance or a combat sport in which one person constantly disengages and retreats. Most sports have rules contrived to prevent this boring lack of play. Combat sports have scoring penalizing "timidity" and allowing referees to stop the fight and forfeit someone who consistently refuses to engage. But the refs don't have to since no one would do that knowing the consequences.

Soccer lacks such wise game rules and reaps the expected outcome. It is a poorly designed game that allows and enables this sort of bad gameplay. You are ahead or tied and can't accept risking a loss due to how the tournament is structured? Then burn time passing the ball back and forth. Spend half an hour doing effectively nothing. Fans and interesting gameplay be damned.

Playing that way is a gamble though because you're surrendering the initiative to the other team. If you're unwilling to press your advantage they can bring their defenders forward to increase the pressure with little risk of an effective counterattack, use the extra men to more easily dispossess you and then take their time probing for an opening because you're too afraid to proactively tackle them, and any clearances immediately fall back into their possession to repeat the process. That leads to a barrage of goal attempts, and the longer that continues the likelier it is that one succeeds. It's frustrating for supporters of the defending team, but it's not boring or uneventful.

What makes matches boring is when both teams play conservative, possession focussed tactics where they retreat deep into their own half the moment they encounter any resistance to their advance, instead relying on a series of mistakes from the opponent to grant them an easy opportunity. That's what leads to a dearth of attempts and corresponding lack of intensity.

Soccer is inferior because 98% of possessions do not advance the game state.

In American football, every play advances the game state. Even if nothing happens, 2nd and 10 is meaningfully different from 1st and 10. 3rd and 10 from the 20 is a very different game state from 1st and 10 from the 20.

In basketball, about half of all plays end in a score (arguably this is too much).

Let me bend your ear briefly on why modern basketball is the worst of all sports.

First, it is the only major sport with a freakish morphology requirement. The best predictor of success in basketball is your height - the average for pro players is the 99th percentile. The only other team sport where you see this is volleyball, which nobody cares about, so it's fine if it caters to a small group. But basketball is the sport for many demographics, and yet 98-99% of people can never go pro no matter how hard they work or how skilled they become.

Second, the rules are stupid. Running with the ball in your hands is not allowed, except you can take a few steps I guess? Especially if it leads to a cool dunk! (Pretty sure that's the actual reason, people like dunks so they bend the rules to allow them). On a more serious note, the modern style of play has devolved to take advantage of these silly rules. Many plays I see in modern games are just a big player bull rushing with the ball in their hands for three steps, then leaping through the air and tipping the ball up while in midair. There's no teamwork beyond setting picks, no finesse, just a big flying body that the defender is not allowed to do anything about. If the ball goes in great, but if the defender gets in the way it's usually a foul and free throw so just as good.

Third, shooting baskets is stupid. It requires kids to spend thousands of hours on a movement skill that has no application to anything else whatsoever. Seriously, can someone come up with any other action in life that is remotely like shooting baskets? How much of our kids' time is wasted on this junk?Also, there's relatively little interaction involved in shooting baskets. I should say, there is interaction if the defender is taller and can put their hands over you, in which case you simply can't succeed no matter how good you are (see point one), but most of the time it's just a skill check roll to see if you get the points or not. What, in every similar sport, is a battle of wits between offense and defense, in basketball is often just a roll of the dice. Player XY hits 3 pointers from this distance at 38% chance. What fun! (BTW, how are there professional players who can't hit free throws? What an embarrassing sport!) The result of this is that basketball is a highly statistical game - the opposite of soccer, upsets and comebacks in basketball rarely happen, because there are so many scoring plays, and scoring is so easy. By minute 5, you can already see which team is better, and the same ratio of points will likely continue for the rest of the game. Everything about basketball is boring.

All basketball arenas should be renovated into indoor soccer arenas.

spend thousands of hours on a movement skill that has no application to anything else whatsoever.

Unlike hockey, where the skill of using a shaped stick to throw things will pay dividends over their lifetime lol

I used to play soccer as a kid, and I now kick stuff around my apartment with precision to clean up, so that was good.

An amusing framing, no doubt! But the fundamental skill in kicking a soccer ball is not the propulsion of the ball, it's balance. Specifically, bilateral balance on a single leg under differing conditions and while under stress and perturbation. Ask a PT or OT and they'll likely confirm that this is one of, if not the most important physical skills to learn for lifelong health and injury prevention. It's what we train the elderly on to prevent falls.

Can't speak to hockey as much as I never played, but shooting a puck seems to involve whole body coordination in a similar way, and manipulating a stick with two hands is endlessly generalizable.

I agree with you on all of this. I just think it applies to basketball too via similar mechanisms of action.

I strongly dislike basketball and, especially, the NBA.

And - you are wrong on almost all of your points and have betrayed the fact that you don't watch much basketball.

Let's start with the whopper:

he result of this is that basketball is a highly statistical game - the opposite of soccer, upsets and comebacks in basketball rarely happen, because there are so many scoring plays, and scoring is so easy. By minute 5, you can already see which team is better, and the same ratio of points will likely continue for the rest of the game.

(Link) Literally the most recent NBA championship included the largest comeback in finals' history.

This is an embarrassingly cliche level of "truth nuke" as the kids say. Basketball is not "highlight statistical" (what does that mean?) and there's a ton of randomness. You can tell because of the length of the season. They need 80+ games to feel confident that one or more teams didn't just hit a statistical (there's that word again) improbability for a 10 game stretch.

the average for pro players is the 99th percentile.

(Link) And the Finals MVP, from this years' championship team, is 6'2"

Again. Big yikes. Sure, 6'2" isn't manlet territory, but, in relative sense in the NBA, in actually is! Brunson's whole "vibe" is that he is undersized and also not a giga-autist shooting specialist. He works his ass off and mostly focuses on ball movement and causing defense schemes to falter and break so he can exploit it. It's actually quite cerebral.

and yet 98-99% of people can never go pro no matter how hard they work or how skilled they become.

How is this not literally exactly true for MLB, NHL, NFL, UFC, Pro Soccer, Olympic Wrestling, Professional Musician, Professional Actor etc. etc. etc.

On a more serious note, the modern style of play has devolved to take advantage of these silly rules. Many plays I see in modern games are just a big player bull rushing with the ball in their hands for three steps, then leaping through the air and tipping the ball up while in midair.

(Link) Again, literally the opposite of what is happening

Mid 2000s NBA? Maybe. That's back when the typical (white) boomer Dad joke was "NBA, more like WWF!" But Steph Curry et al changed the game on such a fundamental level that a Shaq-like player wouldn't make it out of the D League today. You might be pointing to Lebron as this "bull in the China shop" And it's also true that LeBron has always received favorable foul treatment. He's also a 5x 1st-Team Defensive player and noted for his assists. Much like Brunson, interestingly enough, LeBron is so good because he makes other players on his team so good that the opposing team has to make a lose-lose choice to double up on LeBron and leave someone else open, or single cover LeBron and open themselves up to his penetration game (...hehe).

There's no teamwork beyond setting picks, no finesse, just a big flying body that the defender is not allowed to do anything about.

See above. Teamwork has never been more important. The pace at which defense (and offenses, frankly) adapt in game is so fast that incomplete team play is how you get blowouts.

it's usually a foul and free throw so just as good.

Okay, but later on you say:

(BTW, how are there professional players who can't hit free throws? What an embarrassing sport!)

So, free throws aren't "just" as good as making the basket. Hmm.

Third, shooting baskets is stupid.

There it is.

Seriously, can someone come up with any other action in life that is remotely like shooting baskets? How much of our kids' time is wasted on this junk?Also, there's relatively little interaction involved in shooting baskets.

This is perhaps the strangest argument. Practice one's shot is absolutely a necessary part of training, but it's not the only thing you do. And eventually, you know, you're playing or practicing with other people. Specifically, you are coordinating in real time with a group of peers to accomplish a competitive goal against a common opponent. This is what makes all "sports dumb lol" arguments so tedious. Sports are one of the most effective ways to build real pro-social capability. There's a reason why college athletes have such better life outcomes (in general, across the distribution) than college non-athletes. This "shooting baskets is stupid" (literally what you said) is taking a very specific item and stripping away all of the context around it as a means to paint the entire enterprise of Basketball as vapid. It's almost a .... Motte and Bailey.

All basketball arenas should be renovated into indoor soccer arenas.

Even if I shared your potentially homoerotic inclinations for indoor soccer, I couldn't get past the fact that this is an insane de-growth position. The 30 NBA teams are worth, on average, $5.4bn each. That's About $150bn in just team value right off the top. Add in the various marketing, promotions, adverts etc. and The NBA (like the other Big 4 sports) is probably close to a half-a-trillion-dollar-per-year economic impact across the US.

Indoor soccer is not. It's not a tenth of that value. It may be a hundredth, but I don't know (nor do I care). But your position seems to be that we should turn a half-a-trillion-dollars into far, far less because you don't particularly like Basketball. But literally millions and millions of other people do and are willing to pay for it. You must make a stronger case.

Here's The Stronger Case for Why Basketball - Specifically, the NBA - Sucks

All of these are common knowledge problems. I've done enough citations above for the day. If you want to look these up on your own, you can. They are all valid.

  1. Tanking. Because of how the NBA draft works, teams towards the bottom of the league, at the end of the season, will lose on purpose to secure a higher draft pick for the next season. One player can really be that important (LeBron in Cleveland being the canonical example). This means that the end of the regular season is a fucking travesty.

  2. Sports Betting. In the past few years, several players (including major names and, oddly, retired superstars) have been indicted for fixing games, point shaving etc. This corrupts the game, of course, and creates is own gravity because it helps the mobile sports books make money and set better lines. It's become so ubiquitous that, IIRC, the NBA league office is hiring Cybersecurity teams to monitor and secure player devices around game times. There's probably a lawsuit in there somewhere. But the larger point is that guys making seven figures a year still think it's a smart move to get paid $50k to shave points. Which leads to point number 3....

  3. Culture War (Hey, we made it!). The NBA is the most "culturally" aware of the Big 4. Baseball, Football, and Hockey dudes tend just to want to score points, win, and go home (and / or party). The Colin Kapernick saga in the NFL showed that if you really want to get hyperpolitical, you can Resist (TM) your way out of a contract (Also, side note, Kapernick really did suck as a QB, but that's a different thread). In the NBA, being "cultural" seems to be par for the course. It starts at draft night where guys are wearing the most retarded suits in the world. It extends to post game interviews where they discuss, with the media, the scientific merits of flat earth theory (look it up, seriously). And eventually you get the fuckery that is smile posing with Jay-Z while wearing comic sans "I can't breathe" t-shirts.

The issue isn't that the NBA has gone too woke (ask them how they feel about gay players!), it's that the league has become a hyperslop live action TikTok. This is the league of "dabbing each other up" before games (look it up). If Gen-Z wanted to ironically-vibe-code a sports league, it wouldn't be surprising if the "app" turned out to be today's NBA.

I appreciate your thoughts! I intended my original post as somewhat hyperbolic, I thought the last line made that pretty clear - that said, I do think the criticisms I leveled are valid reasons why basketball is comparatively worse than other sports in its fundamental design.

And the Finals MVP, from this years' championship team, is 6'2"

Fair enough, I didn't distinguish roles in my first post. Point guard is the one position where shorter guys can be successful (mostly because it's the position that doesn't take shots). Although apparently the average height of point guards has been increasing in the last few decades - they used to be able to be much shorter!

This "shooting baskets is stupid" (literally what you said) is taking a very specific item and stripping away all of the context around it as a means to paint the entire enterprise of Basketball as vapid.

I'm saying that shooting baskets is a far worse activity than shooting goals in other sports. It's interesting that you highlight "coordinating in real time with a group of peers" when practicing shooting baskets is largely a solo activity - again, in comparison with shooting goals in soccer (which you do against a goalie) or throwing a baseball around. In fact, have you ever seen basketball players get together and have fun practicing passing the ball? Of course not, instead they take turns shooting baskets, because that's the activity that requires the most practice. It's fundamentally less pro-social compared with other team sports.

But your position seems to be that we should turn a half-a-trillion-dollars into far, far less because you don't particularly like Basketball.

What are you even saying here? If basketball were replaced by indoor soccer then obviously soccer would make more money...

I broadly agree that elite level basketball is boring to watch and stupid because solving for the game at that level is too heavily controlled by height.

I would have to disagree that shooting basketballs lacks usefulness outside of basketball. It’s hand-eye coordination which seems important for a lot of things in life. Perhaps it’s over optimized in some ways for shooting but in general sports that promote hand eye coordination seem to be good.

I will admit it's not a particularly useful skill, but I use a basketball throw to toss things in the trash/some other receptacle while yelling "Kobe!" significantly more often then I do anything resembling a football pass, swinging a baseball bat, or kicking a soccer ball.

Tossing a thing into another thing is 100% a widely applicable skill. (Ignoring, for the moment, that basketball players knowingly use biomechanically inferior technique for free throws for aesthetic reasons, and that playing basketball isn't actually teaching you the best and easiest way to do it's central skill)

Learning to shoot a basketball has some utility, in the same way learning any skill has utility. But throwing a baseball or football is a much more translatable skill, and biomechanically what our shoulders are designed to do. The proper movement for shooting a basketball is almost unnatural in comparison, which is why most kids do it wrong until they're corrected and properly trained.

Would turning the hoop sideways fix the sport?

All basketball arenas should be renovated into indoor-soccer arenas.

Don't forget that indoor American football also exists.

The only other team sport where you see this is volleyball, which nobody cares about, so it's fine if it caters to a small group.

Volleyball even innovated the Libero to provide a jobs program for shorter players.

What's your question? Other than 'who will chomp down on my terrible bait'?

You may have noticed we had a soccer tournament that ended yesterday. So a lot of people on the internet - myself included - have been thinking about soccer versus American Sports.

So it’s not bait. It’s just me thinking on the subject. And it’s basically that soccer is in fact an inferior sport but it’s weaknesses are also why you can have an international tournament.

I mean, he's not wrong on soccer's inferiority...

But the real best sport that cannot become a real world cup sports because it's too advanced is hockey, and even then, there's 3 countries that can field an all-star team, and a few more that can field at least an NHL-level team, if not an all-star one.

Do you think that the 3d place match should be abolished? We got a farce this year and it is additional humiliation ritual for teams that are already pissed off at the universe.

No, I found it oddly satisfying that England won third place in a goal bonanza match where Mbappé was the eventual Golden Boot winner and still that didn't mean France won the World Cup.

I don't want football (soccer) to end up like some boring American sport where points are artificially inflated and the entertainment consists of getting out your slide rule for esoteric calculations on who has the best average whatever scoring ratio to three decimal points, not from the "take a break every ten minutes so we can sell TV ads and you need fifteen specialised positions where someone might only play five minutes in a game because they're the designated 'kick the ball from this particular spot on the field, now go back to the bench' player" type of play that I've seen in American football (football) matches.

It got Mbappe the golden boot and it’s consistently one of the better games of the tournament. This year was a really good game for watching.

More importantly it deprived Messi of the golden boot, which in turn muted all the pundits who had been falling over themselves in their race to beatify him.

Is this not the primary reason to get rid of it? Those awards should go to the person who earned it NOT the person running up stats in an exhibition game.

To be fair to Messi, he had an amazing cross in the final, nearly scoring from the corner of the pitch. I'd never actually seen a football turn a right-angle in midair before.

No. I think we should do everything we can to preserve rituals in sport that honor all competition and fighting for every single spot, rather than the "Championship or Bust" mentality that has destroyed the NBA and is eating away at the NFL and MLB.

Oh man, I laughed so hard at the "this is why black people were cheering against the Argentinians" article I read online, because it was by some "who the heck are you?" writer whose entire expertise seemed to be that once upon a time he played in basketball. Tell me you've all heard of Etan (no "h", sic) Thomas, the famous ex-basketball player? 😁

My admittedly unkind reaction was "you're just salty that globally even a yak herder up a Mongolian mountain knows who Messi is, while in the USA itself does anyone outside your own family know you used to play professional sports?"

That's one thing I really hate about what the playoff is doing to college football. As bad as the BCS system was, it meant that an awful lot of teams who weren’t the best could end a season on a massive high note.

This year's was wonderful, and not just because England won. We got a great, flowing game without the pressure, we got to see some beautiful goals, the story of the match (4 down, recovered, ended 6-4). Way better than England vs. Argentina or Spain vs. Argentina.

(Although I also think Argentina just play in a way that doesn't fit the spirit of the game.)

Any bass players here?

I'm making some progress on a project bass and I'm about to put some new strings on. I've always used Labella Deep Talkin' Flats, but for this bass, I'm going to do a BEAD tuning and the DTF B string is terrible.

I've been looking at some of the more exotic options like TIs or Dunlops, but I'm not sure if I want to drop $100 on an experiment. If anybody has tried them, I'd like to know your opinions.

I'm mainly a guitarist, but whenever I have to record bass I usually go for Ernie Ball.

If your problem is tone or slack feel of the low B string, changing string brand is unlikely to help as any such problems in tone come from basic physics: the combination of string thickness, scale length and tuning.

I think the specific issue is that the DTFs are stiff, hexagonal core strings. It makes it hard to get the intonation right. I'm wondering if the round core flats would help with that, since they tend to be more flexible.

I doubt it has anything to do with "flexibility" unless the strings get physically caught in the bridge / nut slots (in which case the slots may need repair work). Bass strings just don't work all that well if the tension is too low. Have you tried recording a single note and checking the spectrum?

Here is what quick googling returned as one possible cause for issues that might be perceived as intonation problems: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-020-2391-2 (string inharmonicity).

See if you can buy a regular cheaper non-hex core bass string and try if that also suffers from intonation issues. That is at least a cheap test and being flatwound vs roundwound should make no difference to that (at least I can’t come up with any physical basis for one).

My daughter (7) wants to do chores for money. I have been putting it off, because I don't want to commit myself to something that I will later regret. Has anyone else offered paid chores? Any suggestions about it? For reference, I am an extremely bad housekeeper with a toddler at home, so everything just keeps getting messy again immediately, and I have turned down her suggestion that she could clean up a space whenever it seems messy, since that's basicially immediately after tidying.

I would almost rather pay her to do slow concentration tasks, like crafts and reading, since that is what I actually want her to start doing more of. An artist I talked to, for instance, said she paid her daughter to read books like Harry Potter aloud while she painted.

The British paying for dead Pythons conundrum at the individual household scale

I have no answers for you

It's a tricky thing paying people to do stuff. I remember reading studies decades ago about how it lowered motivation for many tasks to add a paid component.

You could give a fixed allowance predicated on some amount of chore completion so she acquires money but it isn't 1:1 related to the task

My concern is less chores, and more of any unintended blowback by accidentally making her dislike crafts because her parents monetized it and it killed the vibe (I can't remember the mechanism of action in the studies lol)

It's called overjustification.

This is pocket money and how you earn it, unless things have drastically changed since I was young. Do you pay her an allowance otherwise? I started asking to be paid pocket money when I was seven, because I was already doing small chores around the house and I had no money of my own to buy things like comics (my parents did not pay allowances etc. because this was not a thing).

If your daughter wants to help around the house, and she's capable of doing simple tasks like "put the toys away", "pick up the clothes", and even "sweep the kitchen floor" then let her. Agree an amount of pocket money you will pay her weekly and then she can do a list of simple tasks and/or things you ask her to do (e.g. "play with your little sibling and keep an eye on them while Mommy washes her hair").

I'd be careful about that "for" in "do chores for money".

She should do chores because it's part of maintaining a household. She should have money because it teaches planning and responsibility (including responsibility for creating her own fun). I don't think you could create something employment-like enough to give those benefits, which is why I'm opposed to linking them together.

So, what are you reading?

Reread Campbell's Dauntless. The writing could use a lot of work, but the basic idea works: the legendary Black Jack Geary wakes up to a universe where military discipline has been forgotten, and he has to work to restore it while saving the fleet. Despite the many problems with the writing, it has a quality that makes one want to read it again. Perhaps it is the authenticity of the military aspects combined with Geary's leadership style.

Not much progress on Taylor's A Secular Age.

Ivan and Phoebe by Oksana Lutsysyna

On my wife and my anniversary date night we go to a book store pick out three books for the other and then pick one that we'll read. Ivan and Phoebe came out of that. I'm liking it better than I expected. An initial thought I had is that Ivan feels like a man written by a women, but then I started thinking that maybe that is how men with one foot in the university revolutionary/art scene behave. He lashes out in some weird - what I would consider feminine - ways and and then furthers what could be called Eastern European patriarchy.

Another interesting thing is how poor post Soviet states were. There's a joke about how Party members don't spreads butter on their breads but put chunks of butter on it instead.

The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate. The kind of shit (late Victorian, Edwardian, or interwar England) I want injected straight into my veins. The author was born in 1931, so at best she heard about the era from her parents and other members of the prior generation, but still well-written and captivating. I have a few of her works lined up and I'm greatly looking forward to them.

Interesting Times. One of the few main-series Discworlds I haven’t read! The humor was hit or miss at first, but it didn’t take long before a mugger-in-training gag caught me by surprise. Now I’m in for the ride.

Dauntless sounds…painful. Despite being a huge mil sci fi nerd, I’ve never had much tolerance for that subgenre. Columbus Day was underwhelming. What are some other standouts?

Hoping to have finished de la Rochefoucald's maxims by lunchtime.

Reading Dad Brain. liking it so far.

On a science fiction lark at the moment. Just finished A Deepness in the Sky - super interesting concept! Vernor Vinge's stories have such a different pacing from anything else I've read.

Now I'm part way through the newer James S. A. Corey book The Mercy of the Gods, which I'm also enjoying.

Caugh up to Reverend Insanity. @self_made_human might be interested in this.

Biggest hangup (aside from things like bad prose, which I've reached the stage of acceptance with):

I think Fang Yuan's clones' alignment ought to have been addressed more. Do they not want eternal life, and if they do, are they not afraid that the original will not share? If they don't want it, why? Did Fang Yuan prune their will on creation so that they were effectively enslaved to the goals of the original? Is he simply substrate-agnostic enough to not care which one of him reaches eternal life? Are split souls magically loyal to each other and the original? There is no way he had not considered that he might betray himself, but there's nothing in the text regarding it.

And this is why you don't use/make Forks, kids.

Split souls are generally well aligned to their original. It's practically unheard of for them to act knowingly against the interests of the person who made them. It's a generic property of the process, though Fang Yuan, is, IIRC, willing to use them as backups if his main soul is KIA. They instinctively trust and coordinate with each other according to their shared understanding of their best interests.

But, there are exceptions. I'm not sure where this becomes relevant, and I suspect you've already reached this section if you're in the last third of the book:

Bo Qing was the most successful of Spectral Soul's split souls. He was entirely above board with the project to rescue the original from death, until he was love bombed by Love Hu, as used by Mo Yao. Then he lost his way, or gained independence.

I've reached the extent of what's currently written FWIW.

Understanding one's best interests doesn't mean they're aligned though! If only one body can achieve Fang Yuan's goal, then the best interest only goes as far as "cooperate until we must betray each other to gain eternal life, or merge if possible", which works well enough until all enemies are defeated and eternal life is in reach, yet at no point does FY or any of his clones seem to consider what is to be done at such a juncture. The problem of sharing non-fungible resources is so innate to any clone story in my opinion that it's a travesty for such an otherwise thoughtful author writing such a cynical story to ignore it and just treat the clones as free powerups.

Just cracked open (electronically) LIght on the Other Side of Divorce: Discovering the New You by Dr. Elizabeth Cohen.

No reason.

It's nice to know I was right, but I sure wish I wasn't. I'm sorry to hear that bro.

Thanks, fellow Mottizen, I appreciate it. It's really been inevitable the whole time, I've just spent most of the last five years struggling to accept that. I had hoped that after our last separation that she'd be ready to try and make things work but she flat-out told me recently that she didn't want to deal with her issues, she hated them, and wanted them to go away. I seem to have done more soul-searching and changing than I gave myself credit for, because surprisingly enough, I'd actually rather build a new life and figure out what to do with myself now, rather than stay in a failed marriage which had been my entire identity for all those years. And as good as it could feel to play the White Knight, the uglier truth is that I've just been enabling her behavior by being overly empathetic and not setting boundaries and enforcing my limits because, of course, to do so would have threatened or even ended the marriage. Being on the other side of that, wanting to divorce before things get any worse after all this time and all that's happened, is a strange thing, but hardly the worst of things.

It sounds like you're in about as good a place mentally as you could hope for in these circumstances. If you don't mind my asking, do you have children?

I don't mind and no, we don't. Kids are a whole separate story, but tl;dr, my wife wasn't supposed to be able to have children but she nevertheless got pregnant early in our relationship and miscarried 20 weeks into the pregnancy, probably due to a partially detached placenta. She blames herself for the loss of our son and I'm sure that the trauma from that has had a significant negative impact on our relationship. Regardless, we tried off and on again to have another child for the next few years before she decided that the uncertainty was too much and opted for the copper IUD.

What are your views on Kimi? How seriously should we take benchmark claims, eg how rig-proof are the benchmark criteria which decide the performance comparisons of AI models?

I haven't been able to access the models on their free plan, which means I have no opinion. I've heard people I respect say it's a bit benchmark-maxxed, but the fuck would I know myself?

All I can say is that I don't see a particular use case for it. I have paid plans for ChatGPT and Max for Claude. Those have the bleeding edge models, and I always use the best I can get away with it. I rarely (but not never) need token-churning agentic work, where $/task is a strong constraint. I technically retain access to Gemini 3.1 Pro, but it is a sad model, and I'm not going to touch the family till they fix things with 3.5 Pro.

Chinese models are, in general, not very useful for me. I don't need them. I used R1 etc back when they did something useful for me, and I haven't been tempted back in the last half year.

Reddit finally banned me for running afoul of their permanent Anti-Rightist campaign, so I bit the bullet and registered on KiwiFarms. But whenever I try to post, the captcha tells me I have a "residential VPN" on my phone. AFAIK I have no such thing; I always connect on T-Mobile 5G (Android.) Is it just not possible to post there from a phone? Is there something I'm missing? Thanks.

I think I read somewhere that "residential VPNs" get phone IP addresses by tricking people into installing on their phones apps that relay VPN traffic. Maybe the administrator has decided to just block all IP addresses from the mobile network that you use because residential VPNs like to use that particular network (akin to rangebans on 4chan).

Huh - just tried it at home and I posted just fine, didn't even show the captcha. Guess I passed their spambot test!

I think this particular restriction came about because of one bad actor known as UnrealSkybox who spams websites with CSAM and has a seemingly endless network of residential proxies to burn through to do it. The farms is pro-privacy and allows and encourages registration with regular VPNs.

Why are 55+ communities allowed? What are the perceived benefits of 55+ communities? https://x.com/LeahRain77/status/2079094767233745170 has blown up on X and I know I've seen 55+ communities when searching for houses. They usually come up on searches as less expensive and I guess I assumed they were assisted living facilities but looking at today's drama that's not the case.

It's weird to me that people are getting so offended at the idea of an almost-30 year old woman can continue living in the same home she lived in before her father passed away. What is at stake here to these people that is worth the expense of suing a woman out of her house?

The time I've heard the most complaints about these was from a friend (grad student) trying to find housing in a college town and complaining that lots of the (good) places were 55+ and obviously not available to students. Honestly, in-context I can imagine older adults appreciating some guarantee that the neighbors won't throw a kegger and loudly play beer pong into the wee hours of the morning.

I'm less content with, but maybe understand, not wanting young families adjacent. We should really do better about making most spaces more family-friendly.

Honestly, in-context I can imagine older adults appreciating some guarantee that the neighbors won't throw a kegger and loudly play beer pong into the wee hours of the morning.

This makes some sense, but could be enforced with some noise ordinances instead of age discrimination?

Noise ordnances can only be enforces after the noise is made. And, to be honest, what the enforcement can do? In the best case, police would come and tell them to shut it down. For today. And they'll also hate you forever if they learn who called it. And will repeat the same next week. More likely though, police wouldn't even come because they have better things to do (and if it's a university city, as likely as not they voted to give them as little funding as possible anyway) so they'd just register the complaint and be done with it.

If an HOA has a rule about noise after a certain time of day, then if someone violated it they would have to pay fees and potentially lose their home. It's basically the same thing as this tiktok girl being forced from her home, but with less discrimination over something she can't control.

they would have to pay fees and potentially lose their home.

I haven't heard of any case that HOA evicted someone from their house for unpaid fines. In any case, that would likely be a multi-year very expensive lawsuit. And the students would likely be renters, so they couldn't care less about that. Given that renter evictions in places where there are a lot of students usually are also a long and expensive process, the only real threat to the noise makers would be not extending their lease at the end of it - which may be up to a year ahead - and police arresting them (which probably wouldn't happen but at least they could threaten and intimidate them - if they show up at all).

And even if the deterrent works, a college student rarely lives in the same place for more than a year or two. By the time enforcement starts to stick with one set of residents, they're replaced with a new crop and the cycle begins anew.

Age discrimination is probably less of a hassle to enforce than a noise ordinance (hear the loud party late at night when you're trying to sleep, call the police, wait for the police to show up and tell your neighbors to turn the music down, rinse repeat if they decide to turn the music up again once the police have left).

lots of the (good) places were 55+ and obviously not available to students.

and if there was student housing on that magic dirt, I'm sure the neighborhood would be just as good. (neighborhoods can be geographically advantaged, but that generally isn't the determining factor.)

Yeah, living in an off-campus apartment really made me understand why homeowners fight student housing tooth and nail. Students are young, transient, and generally not personally responsible for their own finances, which is a triple whammy red flag for "will absolutely destroy the neighborhood."

Plus, beyond drunken destruction, the presence of student housing is inversely related to how responsive the local government is to community issues. Students don't pay property taxes and are often still legally domiciled (and therfore are registered to vote) at their parents' home, and will be gone within a couple of years anyway. So nobody at city hall cares about their complaints and the infrastructure all goes to shit. Landlords don't bother keeping up with capital maintenance and don't care as much about the quality of public infrastructure since they have a guaranteed renewing pool of cost-insensitive and naive tenants who tend to be unreasonably tolerant of conditions more established tenants would demand be fixed.

College students make terrible neighbors, even when they're well-behaved teetotalers, because they're fundamentally foreign tourists with no long-term stake in the community.

lots of the (good) places were 55+ and obviously not available to students.

Remembering myself as a student, I am thinking maybe that's exactly the point. I mean, I wasn't particularly wild and rowdy, but there was certain amounts or drinking, listening to loud musing and various behaviors that could be considered obnoxious by 50+ year old me involved. If you want peaceful, quiet, respectful neighbors, the students kinda carry a high risk profile on this one. I know not students are like that, and not all the time, but why take the chance?

listening to loud musing

A philosopy student, I see...

The existentialists are the worst!

Why are 55+ communities allowed?

A cursory search indicates that 55+ communities are specifically exempted from federal law's ban on age/race/etc. discrimination in housing.

What are the perceived benefits of 55+ communities? It's weird to me that people are getting so offended at the idea of an almost-30-year-old woman can continue living in the same home she lived in before her father passed away.

In the vein of the famous comic: (1) You signed a contract. (2) Obey the contract. Whining that the contract is "weird" and (in the linked tweet) "HOAs have too much power" will not garner any sympathy when you agreed to the contract's provisions and you are free to just live somewhere else.

In the vein of the famous comic: (1) You signed a contract. (2) Obey the contract. Whining that the contract is "weird" and (in the linked tweet) "HOAs have too much power" will not garner any sympathy when you agreed to the contract's provisions and you are free to just live somewhere else.

Did the daughter ever agree to the contract's provisions?

I assume her father did, and her father violated the contract with his will. If the daughter is now the executor of his estate, she has an obligation to fulfill the contracts her father signed as much as possible. If I understand correctly.

It doesn’t matter whether she or her father agreed to the HOA, it comes with the house. Most HOAs are covered by restrictive covenants that are written into the title of the property and must ybe conveyed in perpetuity when ownership is transferred by sale, inheritance or other means.

In this case, she can own the property, but she can’t reside in it without a waiver from the HOA.

Such covenants are not so solid depending on the covenant in question.

A cursory search indicates that 55+ communities are specifically exempted from federal law's ban on age/race/etc. discrimination in housing.

My question is more geared towards "What is the reasoning behind allowing this?" What is the massive benefit to society that justifies creating this carve-out?

Power of HOA is not inherent - it usually resides on city codes, state laws and such. It is not weird to argue for changing those to curtail powers that can be given to HOA. Regulations that make certain contract provisions - either inherent or implied - void by law are not unheard of. And most HOAs use template contracts, so arguing for changing those is valid too. I had an HOA and I didn't feel its power is too big, but I also heard horror stories too, so I think one can't just dismiss it so easily.

Enforceability of covenants in property titles (which is what the power of an HOA is based on) would be a function of state land law. City codes have very little to do with it.

In both England and Scotland (separately), the process of transitioning from a regime where most land was owned by aristocratic families who would never dream of selling the freehold, and wanted to make contractual arrangements among family members and tenants which reflected that, to a regime where land was freely tradeable in both theory and practice involved a lot of statutory reform, with a lot of contentious debates about precisely which restrictions on land could be made legally enforceable. Scotland didn't abolish feudalism until 2000 because the only legally bulletproof way of creating a condo or HOA-like arrangement under traditional Scots law was to make the association the feudal overlord of the individual homeowners.

I don't know about the US equivalent, except that it varies a lot by state.

That thread is not exactly good for one's blood pressure. The majority of logic used in excusing it just further cements my personal opinion that people as a whole will gleefully be discriminatory as long as they have the power of the state behind thier actions to excuse it without any self awareness.

And, no, personally, I don't view it as fair. No special exemptions. Either people get the option to discriminate for anything, or no one does.

further cements my personal opinion that people as a whole will gleefully be discriminatory as long as they have the power of the state behind thier actions to excuse it without any self awareness.

This isn't your "personal opinion" it's literally human nature and you are 100% correct as it's the truth of the universe

This and this and this are all low-effort and you've been warned about this before.

You are beginning to look like a low-effort shitposter, and if you don't stop you are going to start earning bans.

We should probably allow more forms of HOA segregation and not less. Keeping a community 55+ means you get to live around people who are all likewise retired who can come over and play at 1 pm on a Tuesday. It means the community can focus on building infrastructure that is specifically beneficial to your age group. The pickleball court doesn’t have any young people dominating games. When you were in college would you want a 40 year old guy who works for Deloitte living in your dorm? No.

Should we have Catholic only neighborhoods? Cultural goods can be rivalrous. If a neighborhood is only Catholic then you can build your Church a 5 min walk from everyone’s house. The local restaurants can have very good fried fish because their neighborhood is loaded with people who eat only fish on Fridays.

From first principles segregation can have a lot of beneficial effects. If Chicago could ban black people from a specific neighborhood then the public school in that neighborhood would become very good and no one would feel pressure to pay for private schools. And then no risks of gun violence.

So yes I am a big believer that people should have a right to associate with whoever they want to. And this includes entering contracts to exclude outsiders.

This is getting into why this might have been a culture war topic instead of small scale questions, but I am curious. Why did this exception make it through the Fair Housing Act but not others?

I don't think this story would upset me much if it was fairly applied, so that I could join a Catholic HOA, like you said. Would be really cool to live in a community where a church and Catholic School were within walking distance and we had Corpus Christi processions and Christmas Caroling right outside my house. But, we don't' live in that world, we live in the Fair Housing world. So, why did old (not even that old) people get an exception?

Any small question can usually be merged into a larger more culture war question and in this case it’s legally allowing segregation…..is good?

My guess is old people doesn’t cut racial lines at all and every race has old people. A Catholic HOA would essentially be excluding blacks. There is an Islamic group I believe attempting this is Texas but then Trump heard about it and shut it down. In America Islamic enclaves are definitely not popular and even a Catholic enclave feels a little un-American.

I was watching a video on Twitter of a Muslim complaining that the Halal section was tiny compared to the rest of the meat section. Cultural goods in a community are rivals. There is only so much shelf space and built environment. If you want to live in your culture then you kind of do need segregation and exclude other cultures from the built environment.

Segregation reinvented thru first principles.

My guess is old people doesn’t cut racial lines at all and every race has old people.

Not really. Old people are far whiter than the US as a whole and even the median black American is 12 years younger than their white counterpart. For Hispanics, that median is 19 years younger. One would expect the whiteness of 55+ communities to face DEI's ire, but then there's the argument that Boomer and Gen X whites were mostly exempted from DEI in the first place in exchange for cooperation.

Old people get everything. Legal discrimination in their favor, government paid health care, recent proposals to cut their property taxes. Whatever they want.

At least until the Boomers die, at which point the Millennials and Zoomers will probably screw over Gen X.

Why did this exception make it through the Fair Housing Act but not others?

Other categories are protected from discrimination by the 14th amendment and interpretations thereof. Age isn't one of those protected classes, so Congress was able to carve out the exception where it wouldn't be able to do so for religion. Historically AARP had some good lobbying muscle, which is how I imagine Congress was persuaded to create the 55+ exception.

You have the purpose of allowing old people complexes reversed. The reason to allow them is to concentrate Boomers who are interested in HOA busybody lifestyles away from the rest of us. I don't want to live in a place where the old lady next door is going to call the police because there are kids playing in the street. By allowing old people complexes, it gives them the opportunity to live out their dream of being in everyone else's business without directly being in my business.

World Cup predictions? I expect Argentina to win off late scoring goals while the first 70 minutes is basically keep away by both teams.

  1. Spain plays too cautiously and loses the match.

  2. Lamine Yamal gets his WC goal but only after the match is out of reach.

  3. Spain red card around the 70th minute.

  4. Messi principally attacks the box through the center, knowing that Spain will be protecting the wings to prevent crosses.

  5. Winning goal for Messi or Alvarez either after the 80th minute or in the second half of extra time. No penalties.

  6. Mamdani is spotted in Trump’s luxury box mid-conversation with the POTUS, both laughing heartily.

I was hoping for the Mamdani sighting, but alas this was all completely off.

Haha yeah this was a wild miss from me.

Spain was the pre-match favorite at about 60/40 and so far they've been playing like it. I'm rooting for VArgentina to induce additional seethe amongst the types who complain about #ArgentinaSoWhite and Argentine fans being meanies toward blacks.

I've already been pleased with France and England getting knocked out the semifinals, thus resulting in the file-drawering of a thousand prewritten "What the World Cup final has to teach us about the importance of immigration"-type articles. An Argentina victory would be the cherry on top and would prevent such articles getting salvaged if Yamal scores in a Spanish win.

Good to see Cucurella (cool name) carrying Puyol's torch of at least one Spanish player caveman-maxxing. From Tom Cruise's speech to the halftime performance, this love and unity feelgood hugboxy circlejerk is all so tiresome, though.

Yamal was born in Spain and lived there his whole life from what I can tell. I view Argentina and Spain as among the teams doing the very least fudging about nationality.

Argentina’s tactics are extremely sketchy and dark arts which is the main reason I’m rooting against them. Also the spain team is quite white…

I think Spain takes it unless Argentina scores a goal early that throws them off, they're extremely disciplined and have a top tier midfield, so I don't think they'll fall for the classic Argentinian antics.

I know we have a bunch of Catholic Church nerds on this forum. So I want to ask you all about the current relationship between the Church and China. What is the life of a congregant/decon/monk/nun/priest/bishop like in China? To what extent does the church exist above ground with the CCP's approval and to what extent does it exist below ground? To what extent is it oppressed?

Effortpost please :)

I’m no expert on Catholicism, but IIRC the church still has in-the-vest bishops in China.

The current status is that there is an above ground church. Officials(clergy etc) in the above ground church are legally required to be members in the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a communist front group which picks bishops and disciplines priests for hewing too close to Catholic doctrines the CCP doesn’t like. Non-Chinese Catholics are generally agreed to be dispensed from mass attendance inside red China and the Vatican does not impose penalties on the CPCA.

China also has an underground church about which virtually nothing is known except that it was stronger when John Paul II let them consecrate underground bishops to replace the ones martyred. There may still be underground bishops being consecrated in technical violation of canon law; the Vatican is supremely uninterested in excommunicating them. Most Catholics in China attend underground services at least occasionally(unlike in the gulf countries, underground priests are largely local) but underground church only Catholics are agreed to be a minority.

Edit to add- in Conservative Muslim countries, the underground church usually uses nonresident priests who say masses in private. Red China is unique in having a theoretically aboveboard structure to go along with it; the soviets tried to have this but failed and tended to lapse into persecution. To read about the experience of a Catholic priest ministering under persecution in the Soviet Union, With God in Russia by Fr Walter Ciszek is generally agreed as the best account. Nothing of the sort has been published for either red China or the gulf countries.

the Vatican is supremely uninterested in excommunicating them

Unauthorised consecrations are a latae sententiae excommunication, so failing to publish the excommunications doesn't mean that people are not excommunicated (and given that we are dealing with the most observant Catholics, this probably matters). That said, it is entirely plausible that the Church has secretly authorised these consecrations.

In practice, that is not how it works- excommunications are publicized as a judgement that the extenuating factors don’t apply. The lack of publication of excommunications serves as a judgement that whatever reason they have for doing it(in this case, almost certainly persecution) is good enough to dispense from the law.

Lone cranks doing crank things under the radar is the reason for the látame sententiae cannons, when high profile behavior goes unpunished it can be assumed to be judged not excommunicating.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I finally have a gaming PC. I am far behind on gaming. The newest console I have is from 2012. I never had a gaming PC. I am open to any games of any genre from the last 30 years. I love RPGs, but open to anything. Bonus if it’s cheap.

I accidentally posted in another thread and found this in an old tab, so sorry for the delay!

Guild Wars (the first game, not the MMO) got an update recently. It’s cheap, it’s a couple hundred hours for all three campaigns, and the gameplay is decent for its time if you don’t mind it feeling clunky by today’s standards. Real time, but more tactical than action. Skill system inspired by deck building games (eg you have a ton of available skills but can only carry 8 at one time). Stories are functional.

There are a lot of games I could recommend, but seeing as how I have 3000 hours in Factorio I have to go with that one. It doesn't click for everyone, but when it clicks it clicks.

I am now vaguely hoping you're unemployed for a whole year. Can't imagine getting to experience so many of these the first time.

You've seen many amazing recs, some I think are overrated.

I'll just drop The Homeworld Remastered Collection which is on sale for $3.49. The collection has essentially 4 games (HW1 and HW2, then the remastered versions of each).

The single player experience is really what you're looking for. While the remastered version has some mechanical issues, it does have some major QoL upgrades and is gorgeous. There's nothing else like it as far as I'm concerned. Enjoy!

https://youtube.com/@Warlockracy

This guy does medium to long reviews (30 minutes to 2.5 hours) of most popular RPGs that have been released in the last 20 years, and many that you will never have heard of unless you grew up in the USSR or former republic thereof, or you somehow learned Russian to get into their indy dev scene. Most of the titles mentioned here he's reviewed.

It's such a wide universe that it's hard to really just dump a suggestion without any feelers for what you'd be interested in. Going off of RPGs and with a fairly wide variety

Path of exile(1 or 2): Diablo style top down click to move loot game with near infinite complexity and a deep market economy. Both games are popular and continue to have near quarterly large patches. It's an overwhelming amount of complexity that people either love or hate. poe 1 is free and poe2 has a $30 buy in until the end of the year when it goes out of early access. The buy in gets you store credit which you could use to buy stash tabs(good or organizing your loot) that apply to both games.

Baulder's gate 3: basically dungeons in dragons as a single player adventure, extremely well received. If you're at all interested in the dungeons and dragons experience this is worth a pick up.

Hades 1 and 2: this is a rogue lite(a genre where you start essentially new games repeatedly with random powerups to try and beat the story, lite means there are inter-run power ups and like means no inter-run powerups essentially) with good RPG themes, great if you like a quick self contained run game that leaves you wanting to play just one more.

slay the spire 1 and 2: sts1 kicked off a whole genre of turn based rogue likes. It's a card game in the rogue lite style.

Blue prince: Another rogue lite at a slower pace where you explore rooms and try to get deeper into an ever changing house as you piece together a neat story.

Clair Obscur: expedition 33: A French JRPG with great atmosphere, not really my type of game but really well received.

Doom: It's doom!

Factorio: Ok, not much of a role play game but you're on the motte, you'd probably like factorio. Build a factory to turn stuff into stuff you need to build a bigger factory.

Hogwarts Legacy: If you like harry potter then it's a very competently made RPG in that game. The game play isn't anything to write home about but it's an RPG set in hogwarts, what more do you want?

Binding of Isaac: Perhaps the GOAT of Rogue likes, old but holds up.

That's what I find scrolling through the last couple years of my steam library. I'm sure I've missed some. If you have any games you've particularly liked in the past or mechanics you're interested in I might be able to refine the search a bit.

My favorite RPG in a long time is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I've just started my second playthrough (hardcore mode this time), and it's the single most immersive game I've ever played. Historical authenticity is the core design principle baked into literally every aspect of the game, from world design to dialogue to the combat mechanics. The world is an absolutely beautiful, painstaking recreation of early 15th century Bohemia that you can get lost in for hours exploring, hunting, gathering herbs to make potions. The combat is intuitive but difficult to master. The side quests are well written and feel organically integrated into the world in a way I've rarely seen in RPGs. Lots of different ways to tackle problems. Mostly refuses to inject modern cultural norms where they don't belong (one obnoxious essential NPC aside), to the point where it's one of the only pieces of contemporary media set in the pre-modern era i can think of that actually takes the religious convictions its characters should have seriously.

I made so many damn potions. I got all the feats for potionmaking and made a ton of groschen selling them.

It felt fun to "stay up all night" ingame, working for my economic enrichment.

Hollow Knight is absolutely must play, though potentially you already have it on your console. It is every bit the equal of Super Metroid. Its sequel, Silksong, is better but also not as perfect.

I'm going to immediately suggest a few "gold standard" games, since you missed them the first time around. They're all older, but either have staying power or inform a lot of newer games.

  1. Portal 2
  2. Divinity original sin 2 (or baldurs gate 3 if you prefer dungeons and dragons)
  3. Spec Ops: The Line
  4. Fallout: New Vegas
  5. Skyrim
  6. Deep Rock Galactic
  7. Terraria

You missed Dark Souls!

Going to list my favourite lesser-knowns, all puzzle games;

Blue Prince, Chants of Senaar, Case/Rise of the Golden Idol, Strange Horiculture/Antiquities, Seance at Blake Manor, Return of the Obra Dinn.

Since nobody seemed to mention it yet, I'll toss in GTAV. It's still technically impressive, good-looking, funny, and welcoming to just screwing around with the world. Lowbrow, perhaps, but it was not the incredible long-lived success it has been for no reason.

I heartily recommend all of these! Although I think you meant Case/Rise of the Golden Idol (even if curse always feels appropriate).

I'd also add my favorite game, Outer Wilds, as well as The Witness.

D'oh. I was away from my PC while typing so I was going off memory. Thanks!

I give my highest recommendation to Valheim. It’s hitting 1.0 in a couple months, but do not miss this. I was in a very similar position as you a few years ago. New gaming pc after not gaming at all for 10 years.

If you’ve followed gaming trends at all you’ll have seen the whole survival sandbox genre explode in popularity. Valheim was one of the catalysts for that. It’s by far my favorite in the genre because it’s carefully designed. Boy just a bunch of shit thrown at the wall or giving players exactly what they say they want. I think the design of that game is a good example of “video games as art”. Certainly more so than the typical narrative I’ve slop that gets bandied about with that term.

WhiningCoil mentioned lots of good ones.

I would add Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (2003). If you've managed to avoid the spoilers all this time, you're in for a huge treat.

I'll add a few split up by (non-traditional) genre:

  • Simulations: Interact with systems that are complex enough that you can't hold them in your mind, and require abstraction
    • Factorio, Kerbal Space Program,
  • Puzzles: Interact with systems that are simple enough that you can hold them in your mind, but require optimization
    • Opus Magnum, Portal,
  • Short term, single goal progression: You have (about) half an hour to improve and grow your character before facing the final challenge. Then you start again from (almost) nothing.
    • Slay the Spire, Binding of Issac, Hades
  • Cozy: low pressure, nice looking, slow paced with gentle progression and practically no consequences for "failure".
    • Stardew Valley, Book of Hours
  • Story: Explore a world with a character, and do things in it
    • Fallout (probably New Vegas, but the rest too), Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim
  • Nostalgia bait: The same as the old games you played, but newer.
    • Xenonauts, Endless Sky, Stardew Valley

Emulators

It's been a long time since I've emulated anything. Hell, I don't even think I have a torrent client installed on any of my machines these days. How, ah, concerned should one be about malware and such when it comes to ROMs these days?

I am extremely far from an expert on the topic, but I believe that many emulators automatically verify the ROM's checksum against trusted checksum databases like No-Intro, and will warn you if no match is detected.

Suggesting Dark Souls 2 over DS1, DS3, Bloodborne, or Elden Ring is so crazy and conspicuous that it might be bait. Explain yourself.

Dark Souls 2 is the only game in the "Soulsborne" ""series"" that I've actually played. I have significant nostalgia for it (without DLCs) on the PlayStation 3 a decade ago, and years afterward I accumulated 300 hours of playtime on PC.

  • I've never felt much need to try Dark Souls 1 or Demon's Souls when Dark Souls 2 is so awesome already. (I think my brother and I did also have those two games on PS3. I don't remember why I didn't play them at that time. Maybe I preferred to spend all my time on Dynasty Warriors Gundam 1, 2, and 3.)

  • It is my impression that Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring are "rollslop" in comparison to the more methodical gameplay of their predecessors.

  • As for Bloodborne and Sekiro, I prefer rolling to parrying.

You're in a rare window to have only played DS2, and I guess you're in the small but lively camp of DS2 defenders, while most consider it the black sheep of the series (though it does have its virtues and great points). For what it's worth, Elden Ring's big combat innovation was to get past to rollslop so that rolling is more strategic and timing based rather than spammy like in DS3 and Bloodborne. I highly recommend all the games, but you might like Elden Ring the best.

Cities: Skylines 2 (build cities) Mini Motorways (draw road networks) Freeways (draw highway interchanges)

I'm surprised you play other genres.

Don't forget that Bridge Constructor technically is in the same genre. Civil engineering is an extremely broad category.

Relevant incomplete webpages that I made years ago: 1 2

I noticed that error, and also expected that you'd be here to correct me before I could get to amending it. In return, I can recommend Dyson Sphere Program as something that might be to your taste. You might even learn to build that Space Elevator that's your true calling. To code.

I remain in hopium-huffing mode, not game-playing mode.

(I will take this opportunity to note that Dyson Sphere Program, Factorio, Captain of Industry, etc. are industrial engineering, not civil engineering. But I am interested in them.)

Man, you are in for a great time.

The two PC game digital storefronts worth using are GOG and Steam. GOG began its life selling classic games without DRM (Good Old Games), so it is very relevant to your interests. Steam can’t make the no-DRM claim, but it’s shown a level of ethical consistency uncommon in its space and its collection is enormous. I buy from GOG where I can and from Steam the rest of the time. The Steam sale (now copied by GOG) is a plague on the hobby; some vintage games will have appropriately discounted baseline prices, but many games will be left at their original retail prices so that the sales look more impressive and trigger more fear of missing out. Caveat emptor.

For older games – anything before the mid-aughts, say – I strongly recommend skimming the manual; it’s usually available with the game as a PDF. I have have had friends bounce off some truly excellent games because they couldn’t figure out one or two U.I. elements that were clearly explained in the manual. If that feels like an imposition in 2026, remember that it usually spares you from the tedious tutorials modern games use for the same reason.

Some of these you may have played on console, but I will recommend them anyway.

Role-playing Games

Diablo 1 [1997] (GOG)

Diablo is a real-time dungeoncrawler based heavily on the turn-based roguelikes that came before it. It’s a blast of a game and a polished jewel of a design. GOG sells it together with its third-party DLC Hellfire, which is fun but not as polished. I recommend going without the DLC for your first playthrough.

I haven’t included Diablo II on this list because I feel it hasn’t aged as well, but it is also a great game. I haven’t played the later sequels that are online-only.

Fallout 1 [1997] (GOG, Steam)
Fallout 2 [1998] (GOG, Steam)

Fallout is a top-down RPG in the classic style, set in a retro-future post-apocalyptic wasteland. The worldbuilding is great, the atmosphere is great, the whimsy is on point, and the mechanics are solid. Read the manual for this one. Fallout 2 is also very solid, but I feel like it’s stretching the limits of the design, particularly in the endgame; if you enjoy the first, it’s absolutely worth playing.

Neverwinter Nights 1 [2002] (GOG, Steam)

The AD&D computer games of the late 1990s have an excellent reputation, but I have not played them. This game was my first in that subgenre, and it’s based on 3rd edition D&D. It has its share of worn and cheesy tropes, but that’s why you play this kind of game, and it has enough new storytelling to keep things interesting. But NWN is very grindy by modern standards, and that holds it back in our era. It’s a charming classic, but some will bounce off.

Knights of the Old Republic 1 [2003] (GOG, Steam)

KOTOR is a Star Wars RPG that uses an adapted version of the D&D 3e rules that dominated the tabletop RPG market at the time. It’s not the ideal ruleset for Star Wars but it’s serviceable, and the characters and the writing make the game fantastic. It’s also pretty grindy; play it anyway.

Knights of the Old Republic 2 [2004] (GOG, Steam)

A more reflective, and perhaps jaded, game than KOTOR, KOTOR II makes a good sequel. It was also rushed out the door, and it shows; play it with the restored content mod (TSLRCM).

Neverwinter Nights 2 [2006] (GOG)

Another classic fantasy RPG, NWN2 benefitted from a newer engine than the original. In addition to the usual RPG wanderings, you find yourself in charge of a keep, preparing it for the climactic battle, which roots you more deeply in the setting.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [2006] (GOG original, Steam remaster)

The Elder Scrolls series is legendary for a reason. This game’s predecessor, Morrowind is a great game that oozes character; and as someone playing years later you don’t have to suffer through the half-hourly crashes to desktop that plagued it at release. But, as immersive as we found it at the time, Morrowind has gotten rougher with age.

Oblivion filed off most of Morrowind’s rough edges, but it introduced one new one: level scaling. The level scaling in Oblivion is bonkers. The remaster updates player character leveling mechanics but not level scaling. But PCs get mods! If you like this style of open world, exploratory, first-person RPG, I very much recommend playing the remaster with a series of mods by PushTheWinButton: Ascension Remastered, Balanced NPC Level Cap - Remastered, Simple Creature Level Cap, and Balanced Unleveled Rewards - Remastered.

Mass Effect 1–3 [2007–2012]

Mass Effect is a stellar series of shooter-RPGs. You may have played them on console. The first game has more classic RPG mechanics, while the second and third favor more shootery mechanics. While the series is excellent overall, its ending is controversial and, in my humble opinion, somewhat disappointing. It’s still absolutely worth playing.

I don’t give store links here because, while you can buy the game on Steam, you have to install and play it through EA’s storefront. EA is as slimy as Valve is ethical. I still have memories of playing ME3 and being regularly kicked out of the game without a save because my Internet connection flaked out. I would dearly love to play the series’ remaster, but I won’t buy it at this point unless I can get a DRM-free version – mighty unlikely.

Fallout 3 [2008] (GOG with DLC, Steam w/o DLC, Steam with DLC)

Fallout 3 proved that it is possible to make a first-person game built on the Oblivion engine feel like Fallout. This is actually a pretty big coup, and it’s a solid game. It feels like a soft remake of the original in some ways. It also fixes Oblivion’s level scaling issue. While it’s not as good as Fallout or Oblivion, I recommend it.

Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 came out as sequels to this one. FNV is a beloved fan favorite, but – heresy! – I don’t enjoy it as much. Fallout 4 suffered from being tied into its new base building subsystem, much as Oblivion suffered from level scaling.

Dragon Age: Origins [2009] (GOG)

This is one of the all-time great CRPGs, and if you haven’t played it yet, you absolutely have to. Mandatory. Buy it now.

At release the greatness of the game was compromised by EA’s sliminess. It was packaged with a voucher for a day-one DLC that could only be redeemed once, requiring online activation of your game – using the disc as proof of purchase was still standard then – and bringing down the value of resold copies. You would also encounter a questgiver at your camp, and when you tried to accept his quest he would upsell you on another day-one DLC. The GOG version has all of the DLC and none of the DRM. I heartily recommend it.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [2011] (GOG, Steam)

If you are an RPG fan, you doubtless know what Skyrim is and have probably played it. It further streamlines and consolifies the game design, so it feels weaker in some respects than Oblivion, but it’s still a very solid game.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution [2011] (GOG, Steam)

The original Deus Ex was groundbreaking, but time hasn’t been kind to it. This action RPG prequel is a lot of fun and supports different playstyles. If you enjoy it, its sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is worth looking into; it’s a little weaker but still a quality game.

Pillars of Eternity 1 [2015] (GOG, Steam)

This may be the best CRPG ever made. It more or less resurrected top-down RPGs as a genre. Its worldbuilding is excellent (not perfect but excellent), and its mechanics build on the old D&D CRPGs. It manages to feel classic and fresh at the same time. Timeless.

The expanion takes place mid-way through the main plot, which causes some awkwardness with level progression. But the expansion’s also excellent, so I recommend playing it at the appropriate point in the story.

Do not skip this one.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire [2018] (GOG, Steam)

Deadfire is a sequel worthy of the original. It wasn’t the commercial success its predecessor was, partly because the publisher insisted on voicing all the dialogue this time, which adds greatly to the atmosphere but cost an enormous sum. It’s a fantastic game, and IMHO all the DLC are worth it.

Because Deadfire didn’t make bank, and because the studio is now owned by Microsoft, we may never see a Pillars 3. They did make a first-person action game called Awakened. It’s okay, but the marketing led people to expect Skyrim, and it wasn’t anything like Skyrim, so it flopped. MS recently canceled Awakened 2 in favor of putting the studio on another Fallout game. Meh.

Cyberpunk 2077 [2020] (GOG, Steam)

Think 1980s-retro-future Skyrim. It’s based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop RPG of the 1980s, with its timeline pushed forward to 2077 and partly (but not fully) retconned to better agree with subsequent real history.

The suits pushed this game out before it was ready, but the studio has put in the work to overhaul it multiple times since release. (Alas, one of the overhauls introduced a version of level scaling I don’t care for; you can’t have everything.) It’s great now. The expansion is also solid; its starting quest has some QuickTime-event-style sequences I find annoying, but once you get through that the expansion opens up like the base game.

Baldur’s Gate 3 [2023] (GOG, Steam)

BG3 is a very solid, well thought out CRPG in the classic style – very well made and worth your time. Some people treat it as the seminal RPG of our era, and I wouldn’t go that far, but I sure wouldn’t skip it. Remember the jump ability or you will miss parts of the map.

Adventure Games

Quest for Glory I–V [1989–1998] (GOG, Steam)

This is a series of adventure games with RPG elements. Each one is set in a different place based on a different culture, but the protagonist is carried through the whole series. I heartily recommend them.

The first two games are a hybrid of text adventure game with graphical adventure game, using a text parser to accept commands and showing the results on screen; but the series also includes a first-party remake of the first game with the 2D point-and-click engine. The third and fourth games are point-and-click adventure games in the classic style, and the fifth is 3D-rendered.

I think Quest for Glory is criminally underrated, and I encourage everyone who likes adventure games or RPGs to pick it up. If you are put off by the need to use a text parser and EGA graphics for the second game, there is a fan remake in the style of the later games available on the Internet.

The Secret of Monkey Island [1990] (GOG, Steam)

Monkey Island 1 is a masterpiece of an adventure game. It’s the funny and adventurous story of Guybrush Threepwood, who wants to become a mighty pirate and ends up discovering the secret of Monkey Island to vanquish the ghost pirate LeCheck.

I haven’t played the remake, but if I did I would opt for the classic VGA graphics.

Monkey Island 2 and 3 are fun, but they don’t rise to the level of the original. I didn’t care for the fourth one, and I haven’t played any of the others.

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary [1992] (GOG, Steam)
Star Trek: Judgment Rites [1993] (GOG, Steam)

These point-and-click adventures deliver on the promise of feeling like an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. They are a bit more challenging by my lights than Monkey Island or Full Throttle, and they don’t reach the same height as classics. But they are a lot of fun.

Full Throttle [1995] (GOG, Steam)

Another masterpiece of the classic adventure-game era, Full Throttle is the story of Ben, a biker who has to solve a murder and prevent the last motorcycle manufacturer from switching to minivans. As with Monkey Island I haven’t played the remake, but I would play it with the classic graphics.

Grim Fandango [1998] (GOG, Steam)

Grim Fandango is the noir adventure of Manny Calavera, who is trying to work off his sins in the afterlife as a grim reaper and travel agent. Working against a rigged system, he ends up unintentionally perpetrating an injustice himself against one of his clients, and he pursues her across the afterlife in four acts trying to set things right.

The original game had awful controls. I am told the remake’s controls are better.

Esoteric Ebb [2026] (Steam)

This is billed as an RPG, but I consider it an adventure game with RPG elements, like Quest for Glory. Its mechanics are loosely based on D&D 5e. Each of your attributes has its own personality, and the ones you are strongest in will give the most input in your internal dialogues, which can be hilarious. It has good worldbuilding and good writing; surprisingly for a modern game featuring politics, I can only sort of guess at the maker’s own views.

Strategy Games

Master of Orion 2 [1996] (GOG, Steam)

MOO2 is a sci-fi 4X game that was made at the right point in history to have a good balance of simplicity and complexity. It does suffer a bit in the late game, as micromanaging your planets gets tedious (but essential).

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 [1996] (GOG)

HoMM II is a fantasy turn-based strategy game with armies led by heroes who have some RPG mechanical elements. HoMM III is also excellent.

Civilization 3 [2001] (GOG, Steam)

The first three Civ games share the same, increasingly refined, design. This is the apex of that original design, the spiritual granddaddy of 4X games, including those that preceded its third incarnation.

Civilization 4 [2005] (GOG with DLC, Steam w/o DLC)

With Civ 4, the series started overhauling the original design and adding depth and complexity. The gap between Civ 3 and Civ 4 is much larger than the gap between 2 and 3.

Personally I bounced off Civ 5, and I haven’t played the later games.

Stellaris [2016] (GOG, Steam)

Stellaris is in some respects the great, great grandchild of MOO2. I skip over Galactic Civilizations 2 because, while that game was great, I think Stellaris does most of what it does better.

This is a space 4X game where different species can have very different playstyles. The core design has been radically revised several times through updates, for good and for ill. The DLC on this one are pretty hit-and-miss; I would read reviews before choosing which to buy.

Crusader Kings 3 [2020] (Steam)

A grand strategy game with RPG elements, CK3 is far more accessible than CK2 was. You don’t play a nation or a single immortal ruler; you play a dynasty. Interpersonal diplomacy is important, strategic marriages are important, and of course warfare is important.

Your ruler’s personality isn’t just a source of bonuses and penalties, or even just a source of events. Decisions that are out of line with your ruler’s personality cause stress, among other things, so you have to choose between the decisions that best suit your realm and those that best suit you personally. Raising your children (and your vassals’ children!) correctly will pay dividends.

The DLC on this one are pretty consistently excellent. I know I like the game, so I just buy the season passes; but, as with Stellaris, there are a lot of DLC.

Miscellaneous

Lemmings [1991] (Internet Archive)

Lemmings is a classic puzzle game. Lemmings will walk out of one door, blindly walking forward on the side-view map, and it’s your job to get them into another door. To do this, each level gives you a certain number of particular commands you can give individual lemmings, like “dig,” “block,” or “explode.” It’s a true classic.

You can download it for free from the Internet Archive, but as it’s a DOS game you will need to use DOSBox to play it on a modern PC. You can play in your browser too, but I would download it.

SimCity 2000 [1993] (GOG)

SimCity is the classic series of city builder games. SimCity 2000 added flexibility and depth to the classic game. I haven’t played 3000, so I can’t comment on it. The most recent games all went online-only.

SimCity Classic is available on the Internet Archive, and it’s a charming game in its own right; I don’t know whether it’s a legal copy or not, but I can’t find it on GOG or Steam.

Tropico [2001] (GOG, Steam)

This sim game makes you the corrupt dictator of an island banana republic. You can play individual missions with particular goals, or you can play random maps. You build up your economy and your people’s quality of life, play the Russians and the Americans against each other, thwart coups and insurrections, and try to squirrel as much cash as possible away in your Swiss bank account before the clock runs out.

I would say that Paradox gaming (Stellaris and CK3 from your list) is a different hobby to the rest of PC gaming. I love it, but I don't have time for it.

Paradox write giant sandboxes trying to capture as much as possible of the feel of a particular strategic era. (Medieval dynastic politics for the Crusader Kings series, early modern politics dominated by incipient Westphalian states for the Europa Universalis series, the horror of industrial-age warfare in the Vicky series, the truly global scale of WW2 in the Hearts of Iron series.) The playtimes start from 30 hours and can go beyond 100 if you play a large empire from the earliest start date to the final end date.

A bunch of RPGs from various subgenres that I have enjoyed playing:

  • Clair Obscur - French JRPG
  • Disco Elysium - no combat, lots of talking
  • Tyranny - the best Baldur's Gate-like from Obsidian
  • West of Loathing - a great Weird West-themed RPG
  • Ouroboros - an RPGMaker game about sequence breaking. Pity it has porn in it
  • Skyrim - open world dicking around
  • Fallout: New Vegas - probably the best 3D Fallout, needs a bunch of mods (Viva New Vegas)
  • Dragon Age: Origins - the best Baldur's Gate-like
  • Planescape: Torment - naff combat, lots of talking

Puzzle games:

  • The Witness - takes one mechanic (draw a path through a graph) and cooks it twenty different ways
  • World of Goo
  • Patrick's Parabox - the cleverest iteration on Sokoban
  • What the Golf?

Misc:

  • Aquaria - a very pretty underwater themed Metroidvania
  • Borderlands 2 - the best looter-shooter
  • The Wolf Among Us and Tales of the Borderlands - the best cinematic VNs
  • Hotline Miami 1 & 2 - top-down ultraviolence with a great soundtrack
  • Just Cause 2 - the best Just Cause
  • Limbo - a puzzle platformer
  • Portal 1 and 2 - the most famous first-person puzzle games
  • Talos Principle 1 and 2 - the best first-person puzzle games
  • RiME - the prettiest third-person puzzle/platformer
  • The Stanley Parable - the best metagame
  • Supraland - the best first-person puzzle/platformer

the best cinematic VNs

You've compiled a top-notch list in general, which makes the omission of (Telltale's) The Walking Dead here especially odd.

Don't like zombie games.

Fair enough. IMHO this one is worth making an exception for, but I don't really have a good way to convince you of that. In hindsight it's insane that Telltale never just turned Episode 1 of the first season into a free demo.

Welcome to the glorious PC master race. Protip: Steam is the best way to buy and play PC games. Always wait for a sale; never buy games at full price.

My recommendations:

If you're open to using Steam, I strongly suggest checking out Humble Bundle on a regular basis. They offer pay-what-you-want game bundles with higher donations unlocking higher tier bundles. Thanks to them, I have almost as many games as books.

Very strong agree with the top pick. Civ IV and SMAC are the best games in the Civ franchise, and Civ IV is a lot more accessible to new players. I am happy to defend this position if anyone wants to argue it.

Coming out strong with Civ4 at the top.

Finishing weak with MtG Arena. (Free) you say, but I object.

Cursed Treasure 2 Evil Evolution Bundle ($1.46)

Worth noting that it's a remake/rebalance for a flash game, and you can get those for free https://flashpointarchive.org/

Protip: Steam is the best way to buy and play PC games.

You forgot GOG.

Buddy, you are in for such a treat. If you are serious about anything from the last 30 years, you are in for a firehose of fun you can scarcely imagine.

But first, install Linux Mint, or CachyOS, or whatever your preferred form of Linux is. Microsoft Windows is over, and your computing experience will be much more pleasant (not to mention faster and more responsive) with any of the popular Linux distros. They all run windows games virtually out of the box these days.

Since everyone else is focusing on new trash from the last 10 years, let me offer a broader prespective.

  • StarCraft (1998) - I still think this might have one of the most finely honed RTS campaigns of all time. Just flawless.
  • Quake 2 (1997) - I consider this the peak of a form of shooter that died for a long time post Half-Life. It's all about rule of cool in the level design, and enemy attack patterns you can actually anticipate and dodge. Fun weapons too.
  • Might & Magic VI (1998) - Possibly the best Might & Magic ever. First one that didn't constrain movement to a grid, massive open world, tons of quests and loot, so many fun ways you can upgrade your characters, including quests for advanced classes. Might & Magic VII is better in some ways, some people liked that you got a castle. I never cared for the fact that the story put you on a deadline.
  • Half-Life (1998) - The FPS that completely redefined how FPS were made. Environmental story telling at it's best, and IMHO better than it's sequel.
  • Baldur's Gate (1998) - I replayed this a few years ago and absolutely adored it. A relatively low power AD&D powered RPG. It's a tight 10-20 hour experience with a little bit of everything you could possibly want in an RPG. See Icewind Dale if you want more of a dungeon crawl experience, and Planescape Torment if you lean more story and role play heavy.
  • Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns (2001) - My love for this game is inexplicable. Just a very unique take on an RTS. Kind of a left field pick I will admit.
  • Max Payne (2001) - The game that invented bullet time! And more or less set in stone the way Remedy Entertainment made games and told stories from this point on. If you like it, you'll probably like everything else Remedy made (Max Payne 2, Alan Wake, Control, etc)
  • Morrowind (2002) - Another possible high water mark for the Elder Scrolls games. Massive, and alien, open world. No level scaling in the world. Hits are determined by stats and not timing or player skill like later games. Probably the last pure RPG in the series before Oblivion moved it more in an action direction.
  • Arx Fatalis (2002) - A dungeon crawl RPG in the spirit of Ultima Underworld. Just you, an underground labyrinth, and whatever you can scrounge along the way. I never actually beat it now that I think about it.
  • Tron 2.0 (2003) - Probably a better sequel to the original movie than what we actually got. I remember really enjoying it, but it's been forever since I last played it. Another left field pick.
  • Painkiller (2004) - The first FPS where bunny hopping wasn't just a thing you could do, but actively required to handle the raw quantity of enemies, as well as get to certain areas. Fucking love it. Can't speak to the sequels though.
  • Darwinia (2005) - An indie game before indie games were really a thing. It changed a lot over the years. I still have an old CD-ROM copy with gesture controls and all sorts of nonsense, since that was hip at the time. I think if you get it now of GOG or something it has more traditional controls. Sort of an RTS? Sort of a god game? You'll see.
  • Titan Quest (2006) - Do you like action RPGs? Probably one of the last best ones. Then THQ went out of business and they all formed a new game studio and made Grim Dawn, which is also pretty damned good.
  • Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (2004) - I always found the campaigns for this game underwhelming, but the Dark Crusade expansion had a really fun campaign mode for all the playable factions. Something like 8 of them I think? It got a little out of control.
  • Sid Meier's Railroad (2006) - I never liked train games. Maybe this isn't even a very good train game for the people that really love train games. But it worked for me.
  • Legend of Grimrock (2012) - An old school grid based, real time dungeon crawler RPG, in the style of Dungeon Master. Strongly recommend.

That's probably enough for now. Have fun.

Sid Meier's Railroad (2006) - I never liked train games. Maybe this isn't even a very good train game for the people that really love train games. But it worked for me.

Still my favorite train game by far (unless we're counting Factorio). Hard to get it to work now though.

Railroads! is fast-paced, fairly intuitive, plenty of variability, and a full game doesn't take too long. It's just fun in a way that I mostly don't find other train games to be. I think because it's optimizing for gameplay instead of trying to be a realistic simulation.

Also, and this is big, industries actually set up near their input resources! One of the things that drives me crazy about, for example, Transport Fever 2 is that there'll be one brick factory and one source of stone and they'll be on opposite sides of the map and it can take literally years to get a shipment over. Oh, and then there's no market for the finished good anywhere nearby even once they're made. The placement just makes no sense. TF2 gets around this by making every shipment worthwhile to deliver, more or less, which isn't how things work!

Railroads! instead encourages the player to prioritize the placement of high-value lines to make money quickly, and then invest that surplus in developing more complicated supply chains and industries. While also managing stock price and heading off opponents, of course.

Finally, there's just enough maintenance/upgrade pressure to scratch my itch, without it becoming a sprawling nightmare to manage like TF2.

The only real complaint I have about Railroads! is that the train table mode has no option for restricting town growth, so instead of setting up a picturesque little train table it always ends up as sprawling cities.

Morrowind has some level scaling. It is just handled so well you'd never notice. More likely to spawn tougher monsters and more likely to spawn better random loot based on character level. But also lots of fixed items and all named npcs are fixed.

Great list. Surprised not to see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) on the list, given that you've listed a lot of strategy and some other Sid Meier.

If @samesies wants to catch up on recent gaming history, it's probably worth playing a couple of "modern military shooters" to get a sense of what Doom 2016 was a reaction against and return to. Maybe add a modern boomer shooter too.

There's also a bunch of good remakes out these days, which might be a good way to pick up games you missed that might not run as easily. Many of LucasArts' classic adventure games now have remastered editions that run on modern machines. I'd recommend Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2, and Full Throttle from that set. I think System Shock 1 and 2 got decent remakes if you want to play through some pretty influential first-person horror.

Speculative not-necessarily-recommendations: Brutal Legend, Oni, maybe one of the Hitman games?

How well does Tron 2.0 run these days? I never could get my pirate version to launch on my machine when I was a broke student.

Great list. Surprised not to see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) on the list, given that you've listed a lot of strategy and some other Sid Meier.

SMAC is a funny game to me. Very much a direct sequel to Civilization II specifically. So much so that, IMHO, you almost need to have played Civilization II first to have gotten you feet wet with the mechanics, before SMAC turns them up to 11. It's also from that era where you really probably should read the manual. Preferably all 200 pages of it. You could probably get by with wiki articles or modern strategy guides, or even watching youtubers tell you how to play. But that just all feels suboptimal to me.

I also haven't played it in forever, so it's just not really top of mind for me.

All true. I think I just have a soft spot for the worldbuilding and the faction leaders, and how much depth there is in there if you want to chase up all the references.

Alpha Centauri's writing is fucking incredible, but the gameplay is sadly outdated, with a lot of annoying micromanagement (units are supported by their home bases rather than by the faction as a whole, air units must return to a base every other turn or crash, etc.).

I don't mind the micro, but there are a bunch of balance issues which really detract from the depth, even without the expansion.

(Standard terraforming is supposed to be stronger but more time-consuming - and polluting - than forests, but forests are too strong for this to work. Condensors' bonus to their own square is too strong, so nobody ever uses their interesting rain effect in favour of simply spamming condensors everywhere. Air power is kinda OP. And there's an ICS problem later in the game because of the Hab Dome limit and then the one-unit-per-turn limit binding excessively-hard.)


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On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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