Something to keep in mind is that the top priority for the product that’s put in front of you isn’t what you want, it’s what the seller wants you to buy. It’s a high margin item, a vendor paid a premium for visibility, it needs to move so warehouse space can be cleared, etc. This goes back to the brick-and-mortar retailer days. If a product recommendation algorithm is a valuable service for you but ultimately isn’t more profitable for the retailer than putting their finger on the scale, it doesn’t make sense for them to play it straight. What they can do is determine you’re more interested in doodads than widgets, and show you more of the doodads. Which doodads get shown at the top isn’t 100% based on your preference.

Recommendations or reviews from writers/critics that have similar tastes and unpaid actors are how I find most products. This was one of the most valuable functions of Reddit, and it’s one of my primary motivations for helping to grow Lemmy.

This is a dimension of the conversation I wish was talked about more. By linking strict norms to behavior in public, we’re telling petite women of the age of majority that don’t have curves that they can’t ever be sexually attractive because it’s extremely immoral and taboo. It’s especially a problem for trans women who can’t afford/don’t want breast augmentation surgery or otherwise can’t develop biological markers that we code as adult. Being told only pedophiles will be attracted to you is harmful to everyone involved.

“AAAA” isn’t a thing. That was just Guillemot being an idiot and flailing on an investor call.

It’s easy to forget the negatives involved here (or some you maybe never knew as a kid). Games used to be very expensive for 80’s kids. Adjusting for inflation, you can get two full-priced AAA games now for what A Link to the Past cost in 1992. It’s part of the reason there’s so much more choice now. Also, games came with manuals because they were so strapped for storage space that they couldn’t put tutorials and instructions in the games themselves. Kids that rented games or purchased them secondhand often didn’t have the manuals available, so they’d get stuck (before Internet info access).

I agree with the others that you should look into PC gaming; aside from the occasional live service game, I’ve only ever updated my games when I want to. In general, indies are a good way to go to mitigate many (if not all) of the issues brought up, but so are quality PC ports. For example, I just bought Trails through Daybreak from GOG, which so far looks like something I’ll never have to update, I can be in the game action within literally four seconds of launching it, and it’s mine forever.

That’s setting aside all the value considerations like access to mods, full control of your save storage, getting to play with the gamepad of your choice, supporting small devs/publishers, etc. Even without diving into indie gaming, there are tons of quality AA titles around, too. Compared to a console, It’s trivial to offset the larger hardware costs with cheaper games.

Newell also has overseen Valve as one of the pioneers of the most predatory monetization in the video game industry (lootboxes, etc.).

There are no saints at this level.

Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there’s still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer’s interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).

Software patents are a thorny topic, and it’s worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There’s risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon’s offhand comment about how Nintendo’s ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.

Didn’t even see the UI. Effectively an in-game cinematic trailer.

Hope there’s more forthcoming soon. Civ’s gotten to a point where I have to know if there’s enough to chew on in the vanilla game if I’m going to buy in early.

Don’t know how old your father is, but at least among Gen X women, creepy men absolutely have been part of the discussion. It just wasn’t a public discussion until much more recently. Hell, the fake phone number thing goes back to landlines.

We’re still at a point of significant cultural change in gender relations, and until an equilibrium point is reached, there’s going to be apprehension about approaching others. To that end, it’s important that we keep small gaffes made in good faith as social misdemeanors (to allow for opportunities to correct behavior) and not career-ending incidents. It only takes a quick browse of social media discussing one of these incidents to see why said apprehension exists.

That said, I still don’t think we’re having enough conversations about consent around positions of authority and social hierarchy in general. Too many people don’t understand that being nice to someone when you’re on the clock isn’t implied consent for continued interaction with that person off the clock. That’s the light stuff; it can go all the way to gross stories about cops and women. It all stems back to authority and power imbalance. This might be more of an issue in the US than elsewhere; I think ideals of “equality” and “social mobility” are so ingrained in our culture that some Americans don’t have the social intelligence around the very real stratification that exists at the workplace and elsewhere.

Fear of rejection is a whole other problem that likely stems from everyone having more anxiety now. I was around a bunch of people in their late teens/early 20’s a lot more than usual the past couple years and holy crap. I thought my social anxiety was bad. I don’t know how these kids are going to function.

One of the last Web 1.0 bastions in gaming. Really hate to see this, especially when Discord is around the peak of its popularity right now. Here’s hoping a more future-proof alternative than that arises.

It’s hard to top the inkjet printers I’ve owned. I still can’t believe 30 years later home printer tech is not only unimproved but worse between lower quality production and squeezing people on ink costs.