Not that it succeeded long term, but I salute Apple Arcade’s venture on this. It’s a subscription service that aimed to highlight iPhone games that had no monetization, and were usually small indie games with a fun idea.

If you hate Windows 11 and don’t mind tinkering, I’d almost think Linux would be a better option especially if your preference is for retro games.

Since everyone’s posting their anecdotes:

I tried out Bazzite, a distro intended for gaming. Much of it was great, but often after coming back from sleep mode, the whole desktop would be suffering from graphical corruption; something I’d largely chalk up to bad drivers.

And, somewhat ironically, I’m also a cyclist, who needs to plan out winter trips when it’s often going to be dark and people are drunk.

Decentralization is a bit like showing people “Here’s how to make friends. I won’t actually introduce you to anyone, though.” I kind of want to at least get a starting point off a general topic.

No, was not directed at you. I was agreeing; Nintendo is stupid and trigger-happy with its lawsuits, but going after this guy makes sense.

I imagine a lawsuit would likely bring up the topic of how hard it would be for a developer to keep the game around past purchase.

For instance, imagine a massively multiplayer online game; everyone playing the game is acutely aware of how much server hardware is needed to maintain that online presence, and it’s unrealistic to assume it would exist forever.

That’s probably why attention was pushed onto The Crew. It’s a racing game that shouldn’t need much from a server, so it’s arguably unfair to tie it to that access and take it offline.

It annoys me how often my standpoint on topics on Lemmy has been “I hate the same people you do, but your reasoning for hating them makes so little sense.”

I think “Disclaimer: Product may explode and take out your eye” only goes so far in terms of warning consumers. Better to actually have something protecting them.

EDIT: My tired mind when I wrote that was just specifically annoyed at the use of disclaimers to excuse a negative trait of software/products. Basically, I was reminded of when Cyberpunk hit the issue of seizure content, and all they did was add a generic warning to the game. But, I really should have added: Sony attempting to use consumer protection to excuse PSN is also stupid. Basically, I’d gotten off topic.

No matter how many times I reread this comment, I don’t see how this reasoning would convince anyone - including yourself - of its position. The point about translation, for instance, not only feels like a non-sequitor but ignores the wealth of subjectivity that inherently goes into translating text to other languages.

I’m not trying to reject you just out of spite; I genuinely don’t think internet arguments like this are ever “winnable” for anyone. If you come up with a better description for what it is you oppose, feel free to mention it, but otherwise, I’d say do some self-reflecting.

I hadn’t realized the court was within Japan. Does Palworld conduct business inside the country? I’d think if it was never released there, Japan would have no basis to pull them into a foreign case.

Naughty Dog’s most famous games (containing humans) are based around white male leads. It’s basically just Uncharted Lost Legacy and TLOU2 that have diverged from that, and not by very much.

Literally the only game of Insomniac’s I can find (outside of anthropomorphic games like Ratchet&Clank) that even leans to minorities is Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which is based on a comic character that was already popular. Even the games based around Peter were going to acknowledge he’s the type of person to work at food banks and embrace New York’s diversity; that’s the pre-existing character.

Nobody complained when Assassin’s Creed had Leonardo da Vinci hand you a tank or a glider, or a female Spartan mysthios fight mythical gods, or have London gang runners that fight in hoods from rooftops. Assassin’s Creed has always ventured into the unrealistically cinematic extensions of common historical myths, and they’re not even the first to turn Yasuke into a samurai. Netflix put out an animated series on that a while back and it was awesome.

I do not expect an answer, but I genuinely think you should quietly ask yourself the question: Are you a racist?

I’d even consider the possibility he’s right, but not for reasons that support his argument.

Games and media present transgender and minority groups in an unobtrusive way, and bigots create 17 articles complaining about their basic inclusion for the sake of “DEI”.

I don’t really get this sentiment.

Elves being racist towards dwarves is acceptable in a game, but white humans being racist towards hispanic humans is “pushing agendas”?

I fault Bioware for a lot of things, but failing to invent a fantasy equivalent of the concept of gender is not one of them. Not everything needs to be moved to an otherworldly analogy just to avoid hurting the feelings of bigots.

What is wrong with Californian views on identity politics, when it’s not just bad writing? Is it the acknowledgement of people that are gender nonbinary?

Now that I think about it, this idea was probably a good one for standard release, not live service. People get enticed by IP rights even if they don’t necessarily devote hundreds of hours to a game like this.

It works for things like Injustice. They see a Batman/Superman fighting game even if they aren’t going to hit Gold rank in competitive. Even if they only hit 10 hours, they paid the entry price.

Still a fan of the player mocking in The Stanley Parable around achievements.

One example has the narrator taking you on a chain of complaints starting with “…Are you seriously just doing this for the achievement??”

Constant upgrades are tricky, since that’s basically content, which most games try to give out slowly to keep you enticed for more. Competitive games won’t give much, so that you won’t outclass other players on an even field.

The Division (2) is a pretty decent one; up until max level you’re just letting numbers go up, and then there’s some specialized builds you can put together that prioritize things like forcing enemy attention, activating abilities more frequently, or triggering combo effects on weapons.

Helldivers 2 has a lot of weapons and different support abilities to unlock.

Have not played it, but Destiny 2 may fit with what you’re looking for.

Game Pass used to have occasional hits coming out like Hi-Fi Rush. They literally fired the development team for putting out a GOTY winner. Meanwhile, Starfield’s team is still around.

Microsoft’s gaming division is basically filled with investors now. No one is making fun games.

My final straw was giving takedowns to assets used in Garry’s Mod. Those uses are generally associated to pro-Nintendo artistic messaging, and don’t go towards any game piracy.

I decided from there I was done with Nintendo, haven’t given them a dime since. They need to downsize their law department before I consider them again.

And I’ll say it again, dumb “quotation” because it only referred to convincing people to try Ubisoft+; which is very explicitly a game rental system.

(Setting aside the change going in through California law where ALL retailers must stop referring to sales as ownership. That affects Assassin’s Creed just as much as your next indie Roguelike)