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I’ve seen code with binary data (such as icons) baked into constants. I can’t wait for the three hour narration of base64 encoded pngs.
I’ve seen code with binary data (such as icons) baked into constants. I can’t wait for the three hour narration of base64 encoded pngs.
To paraphrase an old tweet: “parentheses - for when every thought comes with bonus sub-thoughts”.
Three things in CS meet the qualifications for arcane runes: complex regular expressions, pointer arithmetic, and bit shifting.
Ponder Stibbons inserts another punch card into Hex. Ants flow through tubes and gears begin turning.
Megumin’s other problem is she only specced into things that would improve her explosion’s damage output, neglecting basic mage things like mana capacity and efficiency. So she can only cast one (stupidly overpowered) explosion spell before all but passing out from using more mana than she actually has. It’s why no other party would take her, because even in situations where the spell would be useful she becomes a massive liability after casting it.
Is that why the feet are cropped out too?
“Exploration is one of the central pillars of our gameplay. That’s why we’re offering this handy little DLC to instantly fill out your map!”
I’ve seen that kind of DLC a few times for open world games and it’s always jarring.
Also she’s swimming with real bodies because it was cheaper.
Half-Life, and more recently Abiotic Factor (which is basically Half-Life reimagined as a survival crafting game).
The game made over a billion dollars but disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist almost immediately. Of course the publisher only cares about that first part, so unnecessary sequel it is!
What I meant by it being too late is that once you’re a billionaire, you can fund your interests (like making the world a worse place) off the passive income you make from interest and investments. Licensing fees are probably a drop in the bucket at this point. Even if she makes tens of millions less due to a massive boycott (which is wildly optimistic), it wouldn’t affect her life or political activities a smidgeon.
And since Hogwarts Legacy was the game that finally dethroned Call of Duty and random sports games as the top seller of 2023, I doubt a boycott would be at all effective. Harry Potter was many people’s childhood, and they’ll buy it regardless of external factors just to finally live in that world.
Edit: I fully support anyone who chooses to boycott Rowling and anything associated with her. It makes sense to not want to support her in any way. I just wanted to point out the unfortunate truth that a boycott won’t actually hurt Rowling or her disgusting political activism in any meaningful way, outside of maybe bruising her ego. She’s not beholden to public image like a corporation is, so she won’t even make a token effort to appear less awful.
There are good live service games, but the blatant monetization bothers some people.
Take Warframe, one of the most popular live service games. Everything can be earned in game, including the premium currency as long as you’re willing to put in time and effort. However, every single UI element offers a way to spend that premium currency with higher presentation priority than the actual in-universe methods of doing whatever that menu is for.
Want a specific gun? Only 500 platinum for a fully kitted out model* (or 25,000 credits for the blueprint you actually want, and it wasn’t until fairly recently that they added tooltips showing where to earn things in-game). Building something? Only 20 platinum to rush construction, or you could wait a day. Want to customize your frame? Here’s a few dozen color palettes, 99% of which cost platinum.
* Which is such an awful newbie trap. Don’t buy weapons or frames off the Market in Warframe, kids. Their Prime variants, which are statistically superior, can be bought off other players for a fraction of what DE charges for the inferior regular versions. The Market is hilariously, blatantly overpriced and has been since the very beginning.
Space Engineers is another offender. It’s a block-building game and all of its DLC is cosmetic skins, but even if you don’t own the DLCs those skins show up as unique blocks in the block picker with a padlock icon that tells you to buy their associated DLC. It clutters up the UI to the point of worthlessness, but there’s no way to turn it off because it acts as an advertisement.
Let’s not even get into gacha games, which feed off of addictive impulses to have a small percentage of players pay thousands of dollars to subsidize everyone else who plays for free.
Live Service and Dark Patterns go together. Games as a Service requires a constant revenue stream to fund development, which incentivises predatory design patterns.
I get that, but she’s already a billionaire. The damage is done; nothing we as consumers can do will have a meaningful effect on her life. And the game studio is obviously against her views, given the positive presence of a clearly MtF trans character* in the first game.
* Which honestly bothered me (the obviousness, not the trans part), because the Potterverse is one where you’d imagine transitioning to be easy and perfect (take that, Jo). I think it would have worked better if that character had a flawlessly feminine voice and only revealed they were born male later in their dialog. The way it was implemented it felt like pandering to negate Rowling’s toxic reputation, which tbf it probably was.
Counterpoint: it’s WB Games. Nothing they’ve done in the last few years gives me confidence that their suits won’t fuck things up in their attempts to wring ever more money out of their games.
It also mentions that the unannounced title is planned to have a “live ops” phase post-release, suggesting that the Hogwarts Legacy sequel could be a live-service game. WB Games has been quite vocal about doubling down on its live-service push in recent times, seemingly unfazed by the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
That’s all you need to know.
It’s the, ah, finish that’s the danger.
Basically this:
(I’m sorry)
Catpuchin.
How old do you think Dunmer are before they get the face wrinkles? Maybe they hide their infants because they all look like charcoal raisins?
By the same creator, “this ham gum is mostly bones!”
That could take a lifetime!