The CEO presses pause, the mascot sheep looking over the boardroom in coquettish freeze-frame. “Guys, you’ve gotta tell me, nobody thinks this sheep is fuckable, right? We didn’t put a CM out with a sexy sheep on purpose, did we?”
The VP loosens his collar. The marketing team fidget and look around the table, anywhere to avoid the gaze of the CEO.
“Guys? It’s not fuckable, right?”
A junior exec caves. “M-maybe a little bit?”
“God FUCKING damnit!”
Yeah but it would have to be ‘major’ unfinished business like a massive grudge or a mournful love lost or whatever.
Something where given the choice “hey dude you wanna go chill in the afterlife, or spend the rest of eternity haunting the earth as a spirit?” the choice is to stay.
Ghost lore typically involves some aspect of the deceased becoming ghosts only if they have unfinished business in the mortal realm.
Or only appearing under specific circumstances.
Of course, looking at it pragmatically, the purpose of that lore is to function as a plausible explanation for why ghosts are ‘rare’ despite the number of dead people.
The sad part is, there are people who want it.
Plenty of people out there for whom the purpose of a photo isn’t to document objective reality; it’s to portray a postcard-perfect version of reality they can put on social media for clout.
If you have that mindset, then any filters or AI that make your pretend reality more sparkly than it is are all welcome.
That’s fair :)
Not replacing the parrot.
Going back to the old days where you learn things from an actual knowledgeable human.
He’s not taking the big head off, just the small one.
You could say
( •_•)>⌐■-■
The bus driver came inside
(⌐■_■)
What were they for on stone jugs, if they were just as small? Or were they not?
Throughout all of history people use story and song to transport the mind to other places, to make real what isn’t.
Entertainment needs escapism like bread needs butter.
Can we just fucking STOP doing SUVs please? And huge trucks. And all the rest of that oversized garbage.
“Good Evening” however CAN be a phrase of welcoming.
I almost quit Nier Automata immediately, because the game opens right off the bat with a very long interactive cutscene with gameplay elements which you cannot pause or skip, and during which you cannot save.
And if you die you have to do it all over from the beginning
Fortunately that turned out to be the worst part of the game for me, and I enjoyed the rest of it.
Of course :)
Games by their very nature are not real and even the ones which don’t directly adapt to your success or failure will certainly make concessions to reality and intentional design decisions which make the game more fun.
Personally I think game design is an intriguing subject and some of the ideas developers come up with are absolute genius, like the doom health bar you mentioned. It ramps up the tension, but yet it’s still finite, and if you play terribly you will die.
That to me is the difference. Tell white lies to the player to boost their fun, yes, but don’t remove all consequence with fake infinite health, a bike that steers itself, and QTEs that auto-succeed no matter what you do.
A game you can only win is a game with no agency, and that’s hardly a game at all.
People will play this like “Fucking hey! I aced that bike segment first time!” all proud of their gaming skills when the reality is you did absolutely nothing, my brother.
One way of thinking says maybe that’s okay. Maybe people just want to have a chill time and win and not struggle. Maybe that’s fine.
But on the other hand, it’s utterly deceptive.
To me, this is a reflection of the entirety of modern capitalism. Appeal to everyone. Don’t exclude anyone. Provide an illusion of choice while giving everyone the exact same homogenised experience. Provide the appearance of agency while removing all actual control.
I don’t like it.
Transferred demand.
SDDs and HDDs are too expensive, so people are using SD cards instead.
You just can’t win, basically.
I would have appreciated your easy-to-follow driving however, so thank you.
Let’s say they removed the onboard capability, and doing so halved the price.
You’re then left with a device which costs basically the same as a Quest 3 but also requires a PC to do anything. I’m pretty sure that would be reviewed a heck of a lot worse than even the current situation is.
A self-contained unit that matched the Quest and wins on not price but privacy was the only reasonable direction for Valve here.
“slowdown” means “prevent competition and maintain the status-quo”
“Offer to help the chef” ?
Bestie, if you even come near the kitchen when I’m cooking it’s gonna be the end of you.