I see the title - and first thing I think

“Oblivion, now with 16 times the upscalers” in Todd’s voices

I think this is where the nuance is and where the things can go off the rails. Your example is that you want to more easily be connected with people that you enjoy engaging with but find it hard to find - which you did attempt to find a work around for, which I do commend.

I think because of the volume of scale of the internet it has been fine-tuned and engineered towards benefiting the major players more as they have taken convenience features and frankenstein’d it into a tool of “increased engagement”.

It is like a market square and everyone is shouting out their wares at the same time and the major players (and others) have done their research on how to be the “loudest and most attention-grabbing hawker at the square”

Here the algorithm approach is useful to help “silence the sea of voices” and find “hawkers” that sell “products” that are of interest to you. It does require some discipline on the users part to curate their “hawkers”, but overall the experience is improved as one deals with “products” that is aligned with one’s interests.

I feel, in general, however that the intent has been twisted into something that has become a slippery slope that slides down towards “how can I get eyes on my thing and keep people coming back” for as long as possible. One’s attention gets bombarded with as many ideas as possible and, from this, one’s scope starts to bloat and becomes muddy as one processes too many different ideas and viewpoints in a short time frame and as a result one spends less time forming a individual opinion. I believe this does contribute to shorter attention spans as we attempt to “offload” our thinking onto something else as we try to make sense of all the information we take in.

The easiest thing I can think of is TikTok and how quickly the short video format was incorporated into the big platforms.

It is a human shortcoming I feel that gets taken advantage of (and I feel like it is being cultivated) and as humans we do have a side to us that tries to optimise the shit out of a things - often to our detriment.

I was served the channel by the algorithm and was concerned with the length so I attempted to share in a neutral manner unsure on reception.

I found it interesting and wanted to share the opinion

Yeah, there is a lot of evolving information, yet for now one can still have some measure of control over the content one can engage with

Yes, that is a good idea around what I am thinking in regards to the “magic addictive formula”

They have a system in play that optimises the play experience in a way that is rewarding to “addictive habits” and attempts to “encourage” a habit that leans towards an addiction.

Thank you, it seems the scope of the thought was a lot more open-ended than I imagined.

Was thinking in the line of the how the big game companies seem to try to hook people onto their game experiences and when one hits it big, how they attempt to moderate that experience around trying to keep it at a level that is akin to selling cigarettes.

It is like they are trying to find that “magic addictive formula” and try to be the sole provider of that experience to keep a person coming back to them.

That sounds depressing, it is like they commoditised cheat codes. Sad to see it fall into the trappings that the game makes fun of. I can almost imagine what the GTA 6 version might become if they decide to intergrate that level of “hooks” into its shiny game environment.

I think that was the 2K launcher, if I recall, I remember they were doing something with their games (was playing XCOM 2 at the time) and promptly made use of a workaround

Didn’t like the extra steps just to get into a game - like they were reminding you that you only pay for the license to play the game and the property is theirs to do with as they please. I mean, it is, but still doesn’t help feeling like I am being constantly reminded.

That is probably one of the more famous examples, yeah. They pivoted resources from the single player experience once they saw how much money they were making with their shark cards (I believe it was called). Developed an ecosystem that encouraged spending money to enjoy the game (but not forced) and I guess it was an equivalent experience of getting players to “micro-dose” with a payment to bypass elements of grind to get the best stuff and have an overall smoother experience.

Yeah, they are more apt comparisons where the target market is built upon consistent small (or large) payments that are in a business’ best interests - like in-game currencies (chips in gambling sense) are used to obfuscate the value of what a player is spending money on (which falls into one of the many psychological tricks you mentioned)

Streaming platforms and movies are similar - yes but for them it is a one time recurring cost for the service or in a movie’s case it is a pay per experience.

With game pass, for example, you can play games like streaming, but it won’t be the full experience for some games (i.e the dlc and additional content) - and to be fair, it does usually come at a discount but there in lies additional costs per experience

It is like the equivalent of paying for a streaming service and then it asks and double dips, saying “hey, we see you really liked that show - want to pay us 5 more bucks to enjoy more of it” or a movie and where they ask you to spend more to see the extra deleted scenes

Games are in an area where one can both pay per experience and pay for the service and it is understandable in some cases why that can be - however there are games now that are intended for pay for experience (single player for example) that have additional costs attached to them to draw more “easy” money (this can be the case of developing something worse on purpose to offer a simpler way out of it) or you have games that are nearly the same every year (with them chopping and changing features to make it seem “fresh and new”) and then leverage on a FOMO (mobile games are far worse in this regard) to “encourage” one to spend more on the original purchase.

The effort to manipulate and try to make more with less, feels more erroneous in the gaming sphere

They are trying to get people to become “addicted” to an experience and they wish to target either those that can afford it (and for them - power to them) and/or those that cannot but are unable to control their desire for more (worst case scenario - they hook a proverbial “junkie”)

I will be say I wasn’t thinking too hard into it but, (and not direct response more how a lot of the bad elements feel like they are being pushed)

• Was thinking how the idea of games-as-a-service and subscriptions are considered a priority
• how samey a lot of AAA games seems to feel (like it is consoldated on a “formula”)
• a desire to manipulate towards the idea to spend more on the original product
• supply enough of a product to get a player invested and once hooked - try to maintain that investment over a period of time
• the product is seldom as good as advertised
• the quality of the product, in general, feels like it is being degraded in an effort to more easily manipulate
• games are seen as something as means to an end - and in that vein, it is targeted to be able to draw in people according to metrics and less a expression of creativity

By and large - yes, the idea can be applied to capitalism and I think the idea I was thinking of is that AAA games lean into the more exploitative area of it.

Doesn’t mean it is the only one or even the worst, but I was thinking in the headspace at how the “big games companies” are trying to lean into being more manipulative (directly or subversively) and how it feels more like “drug dealers” trying to sell their brand of high, trying to dictate how to enjoy those highs, they try to lock players into a “brand” of gaming and once they can “control” what people will enjoy, attempt to exploit value from it.

That is true, it did popularise the drive towards extracting large amounts of value for comparatively little effort

Meanwhile Microsoft doing back-room deals to corner more of the market

Hope this cross-post works

https://lemmy.world/post/927104

Although, if I had to think of beginner tips - knowing the keyboard shortcuts help a ton in getting familar with the game and one can use the “enter” key until you get use to it

I personally learnt by using the starting scenario of the shelter to get familiar with getting the basics of water purification, food sustainability and crafting going and camped out in the shelter and get my crafting up to scratch.

I know that I started to enjoy taking advantage of the weaker zombies in the early game and try and find a small town and try clear it out for a nice cushion to get one up to have a lot of raw material on hand, but that is more when one is more confident in the ability to handle zombies and found a style of play one enjoys

Edit

There is another one on the !cataclysmdda@lemmy.ml instance, but it is not my post but here is it is https://lemmy.world/post/1796938

Noita, a precedurally-generated fully destructible, with physics, pixel-graphics action rogue-like game where you play as a mage going through the various layers of a dungeon with the use of your spells that one can spell mix and match with a wand system that can provide the player with interesting and wacky spell combinations.

I just finished watching it and for the most part they got a lot of the tone down and it is well done overall. I liked how they showed Vault-Tec and what they stood for, the general world building, vault stuff. But I have these niggling inklings that bother me with the location of where the show takes place.

It is enjoyable to me it is a solid 7 - 8 out of 10, but had some things that felt off to me and rubbed me the wrong way because I am trying to fit into the narrative I have for my intepretation of the Fallout game timeline. Not saying it is a bad show, just things that subjectively felt off to me.

Going to spoiler tag these things as it has Fallout 1, Fallout 2, New Vegas and the show possible spoilers

I understand that a lot can happen in time and humans are just as easy to stuff up things and as its own thing it does feel “Fallout” and does a lot to be faithful to the games, so in that I do give credit where credit is due

Maybe Season 2 and beyond will answer the questions I have or fill in the holes, or not I need to just enjoy the show for what it is 🤷

Thank you for the information

I guess that is for even older systems that one knows will run within the limitations of 32-bit systems but will not be negatively impacted by it?

The more I know, did throw me off though and changed the keyboard setting to US and haven’t had issues. At least all the other information will be to my liking so that is a happy accident at least.

Appreciate the information, thank you

Thank you for the link, I can definitely have a look at that to get better performance with limited resources

Thanks, and in regards to the sound I think it might be a failure of the mic itself and not a software thing ( seems to not pick up audio on two different devices - tried on one before and now again on the new install seems to be the case - audio just picks up a popping sound and not voice at all) . I probably need to look at a cheap one-off microphone to get me by. 2 Browser stuff is a bit harsh with only 2Gb - need to look at maybe getting firefox lite or something lightweight, but I can get used to 1 tab at a time, can think of it as an opportunity to try work towards something more, but overall pretty impressed by what it is able to accomplish with the old tech.

I feel I have been converted away from microsoft and like what I am seeing with Linux systems so far. I will likely consider it for future systems if I am able to get something more capable later down the line