Isn’t Reddit currently messing up things with search? And yeah I’d agree with the stable users comment. We shall see what the next few months look like to tell.

I think that the adoption will mostly work in steps. Lemmy is currently functional, not pretty, not stable, not well moderated, not well integrated with federation, and poor discovery but it is functional.

Hopefully the next time a wave hits, Lemmy will be more mature and ready to take in more users who will already have communities set up even if they’re small.

I’m concerned though given the slower pace of updates that’s often complained about though.

Tbh it’s the reason I asked. I expected results to look about like this but I’m really interested in the graphs of posts vs active users.

Posting has exploded. I assume a good portion of that is bots. Bots posting news or reposting memes probably. However, a good portion of that must be users posting as well right?

I don’t think that retaining about half of the users that joined in the massive wave is bad actually, it’s the trends that come next where we see what happens. If that line keeps going down for the rest of the year, the platform is probably in trouble.

This is my main concern about the game. With tech that moves this quickly, you have to understand that game companies who are established are living on the very edge of that debt.

Like starfield for example. Who knows how old it’s code is from the start of its development. It’s why Bethesda games break frequently and crash often. When you develop games on a 8-10 year cycle, think of how many hardware generations that is. 3 to 4 right? So when you’re talking about building an engine, then running it and building a game, then supporting it, all over the coarse of 15-20 years of coding? It’s a giant mess to program and there’s no way in hell it can be optimized properly.

Not to mention the massive task of upgrading the game as new hardware and new engine features arrive.

I won’t tell people what to do with their money, but it’s clear people have bought in to both of these games existing. And if it were my money, I’d want to believe in these devs. But for the rest of us, these games need to materialize as functional and fully featured releases for us to care.

And I don’t think the timeline is crazy so far with their development. What’s wild to me is thinking that a newly founded studio, even a well funded one, can knock out a competent single player and MMO with these scopes. It’s slim chances from an outsiders perspective.

Take a look at what mature and well funded studios are putting out in 2023. The likes of Starfield are actually some of the better cases. I know the incentives are different, but still. So I’m expecting a lot of tooling to need to be done for both these games to exist and exist at an enjoyable playability by the end of the 20s.

Anyways, im not trying to kill enthusiasm for people who enjoy interest in the project but to everyone outside of that, this isn’t reassuring. All large scope games should be considered to be nonexistent until they hit reviewers hands at this point.

I still kind of doubt it’s going anywhere fast. Because a game with this scope has already signed up for some pretty massive post-launch support. Let’s be generous and say it takes them another 2-3 years to develop this single player and another 5-6 to finish star citizen. That’s very generous.

They started pre-production in 2010. So it’s already been 13 years of development with near unlimited money on SC. So again, add 5 years till a mainstream launch and another 3-5 years of active support and you’ll be well over two decades deep in a single games development. That’s half of someone’s career to develop one game. Now we add another game on top of this.

The other game is admittedly much easier to develop but still it will take massive amounts of support. If Bethesda can’t do it well, why does anyone think this dev can and in such good time? I have my doubts.

Currently emulating the old Crash Team Racing as I make my way through most of the Crash Bandicoot games. The racing game is pretty hard as racing games go.

Still working on Divinity Original Sin 2. Game is fun and it’s a lot better than #1 in that series. It’s a large time investment but I do love the game.

I think people don’t often factor in that time in a game is just as much or more a cost than money is.

If I make it super nerdy, my equation for games would be more like fun / (money cost + time cost). But really I don’t actively quantify these things, I just have a sense of it.

The other thing id say is that games recently are being judged more on how they respect the players time. The max game money cost is locked in at $70, likely for a long time. So the thing being optimized right now is the fun/time part. Not respecting the players time is one of the worst crimes a game can commit in my opinion.

That’s what I’m hearing about games like Starfield and it’s always been a criticism for games like assassins creed. Like they’re fun games, but the time investment is far too large for what they offer.

The reason it doesn’t apply to sim games or city builders is because you are largely in control of how best your time is spent. That’s why open world games used to rule Steam for a long time and still somewhat do.

Anyways that’s my rant.

Okay so I fully agree on the use of better AI in games as competitors. The AI in games, though sometimes complex, is lacking in a lot of major games and the difficulty setting just basically amps up their damage and health instead of causing them to outplay you.

I think there are two solutions to better competitive games that reduces cheating and they’re already somewhat at work.

The first solution is implementing AI to detect cheating which has been done but very limited in scope. This will require more data collection for the user, but I fully support that if you’re being competitive and not playing casually. Why? Because in person sports also collect plenty of data on you, often even more invasive, to make sure you aren’t cheating. This can be done in collaboration with Microsoft actually because they have the ability to lock down their OS in certain ways while playing competitive games. They just haven’t bothered because no one asks. Same with Linux potentially if someone wanted to make that.

The second important improvement is to raise the stakes for someone who plays any sort of Esport game. I’m reminded of Valve requiring a phone number for CSGO because it’s easy to validate but raises the difficulty and price of cheating and bans. Having a higher price for competitive games is also entirely possible and also raises the stakes to cheat. The less accounts cheaters can buy, the better. Should it ask for a social security card? No. But I think that system bans based on hardware and IP are also important. You can also improve the value/time put into each account to make it more trustworthy. If a person plays CS for thousands of hours, make their account worth something.

And a minor third improvement would be: match people with more matches/xp/hours with other people of similar dedication at similar skill levels. That means cheaters will decrease the more you play and a cheater would have to play for far longer with cheats undetected to get to that point.

There’s plenty that can be done, companies are just doing almost nothing about the problem because cheaters make them money.

Okay so if I ever decide to become a ranking member of a foreign military and get targeted by another foreign intelligence agency, my device may be compromised? Crazy how that works.

Only because it isn’t in the United States

Is that why there’s lead in my hamburger?

“I’m sorry that you were upset about it”

“I feel like I shouldn’t have to keep apologizing but I will anyways”

“I’m sorry if what I did was misinterpreted”

Or my favorite

“It’s not something that I need to apologize for but if it makes you happy”

Frankly I bought the Batman series just to support them and I’ll be buying the walking dead series bundle for the same reason. They have to release new stuff though and that’s going to be really really hard to do because they have to make a game that follows up on a major IP that they own from the old company and also make it really well. Not super likely.

That said, the original death of the company before was rough and was mostly about them expanding and not getting more funding. But the business model was also flawed imo. They forgot to significantly upgrade their games and the first big series, TWD, was the best written one. After that, flat.

If you want to know why they struggle, look at supermassive. Those guys eat telltales lunch and dominate the space. Is there room for both? Probably. But they’ve really got to deliver something killer with the new games or they’re dead again.

I hear ya. It seems like a large portion of what currently stops game streaming is the internet part of the equation. Even in home streaming doesn’t like to be passed through a router and gets slowed down by that somewhat.

Walmart, the biggest grocery retailer in the entire United States, uses face tracking in the majority of their stores in several sections, and we’re concerned about their Wi-Fi?

The Wi-Fi seems like such a minor problem compared to them collecting massive amounts of data off of something you aren’t consenting to explicitly.

Like you walk into their stores and they can know: How often you visit, what items you buy, what payment method you use most often, what items you looked at and what aisles you visit, who you bring with you, what your kids look like, what disabilities you may have, size of your household, and whatever else they want. There’s basically no respect for any privacy in their stores.

The US is a privacy nightmare in competition with China. Most of the US doesn’t have any option over their privacy. You just don’t get it here.

Yeah I find most of this to be similar to what I’ve heard so that’s good confirmation, thank you.

The reason I’m considering it now is that: 1. I believe it will be applicable to industry and will raise my initial pay and work out in the long run. 2. I don’t want to work through a masters. 3. It will only take me 1 year to do it. And 4. I have a way to pay for it so I expect it to accrue very minimal debt. I have about $25k debt from my bachelors but I expect not much more to come from my masters from scholarships/assistant for a professor.

So I’m viewing this as more of a deal, I wouldn’t consider a masters if any one of these things weren’t the case probably.

Wow this is good feedback. I’ll just give some short thoughts on what you said, but thank you for all of that. I’ll also use your comment to give more info about what I’m doing.

1. My program is on the civil side of engineering and is most applicable in space exploration and crossover with other engineering fields. I expect industry would find most of the skills I’d use valuable.
2. I’ve heard this and I’m prepared, but luckily I’m not doing a thesis if I go for this. I’d be writing papers instead.
3. One of my goals is to establish good contacts, so this is good to hear
4. I’m trying to avoid this actually, I’d rather not work and do school at the same time
5. Very much heard and I’m not considering a PhD unless I find myself either enjoying research or I have a career application for it.
6. I do actually have a research assistantship lined up so paying for a masters shouldn’t be a problem.

I swear these people will let the rich steal their food and housing while they look the other way and blame the nearest minority for their problems

Agreed, totally depends on how much you watch. But shopping used DVDs and like I said banding together with friends to buy content eventually begins to work out better for you.

I’m not someone who consumes tv and movie content en masse so it works out for me to do this and for a lot of people who watch a season or two of a show a month, it’s not that much more expensive to own.

What I meant about the capitalism concept is that the core idea isn’t about enjoyment or getting to watch what you want. It’s not about convenience anymore. This is a capitalistic cycle where it stops innovating and starts to poison it’s consumer.

So shows will now be splintered across services, shows will get cancelled for being less profitable, and the overall quality will dip because we’re driving art to the bottom price. Whatever makes shareholders more money. And is this true? I feel like it is. Quality of shows has dipped quite a bit to fit the streaming service pricing.

We can argue about whether people want that or not, but it’s basically just what’s been done with every other consumer item. Dominate the market, lose money, get the subscribers, and then make their experience shittier over time.

Oh let’s be real here, this is what capitalism does. It chooses the worst possible option for entertainment because it’s what makes the most money. What makes the most money is not making you happy, but getting you to stay subscribed.

Let me tell you the real secret. You know what it costs to rent a movie online? And stream it? And then never watch it again? Yeah now justify that against streaming services.

I’ll tell you right now, go get Plex. If you don’t already use a media server, start. Because chances are that you don’t actually watch 90% of what’s on those services. So that $15 a month for content you don’t own could easily be $20 a month on content that you do actually own. Not to mention there’s no ads involved and you can stream as many devices as you want from anywhere. Get friends to pitch in and it’s even better.

The ONLY argument for this is convenience of all the shows at your fingertips. Except now that’s not the case and they’re on different services, screw it, either pirate the media or buy it used on disc.