These comments are a real Dunning-Kruger festival.

This is the most reddit post I’ve seen all week.

Yeah the bleakness of From’s settings is definitely an inherent part of their worldbuilding.

Elden Ring has the deepest, most complex worldbuilding of any game ever made, and it’s not even close. For anyone interested in worldbuilding I strongly urge you to watch some Elden Ring lore videos from The Tarnished Archaeologist to learn about the techniques that the Elden Ring devs use to put incredibly deep and subtle worldbuilding into their games. It’s changed the way I think about worldbuilding in any context.

https://www.youtube.com/@tarnishedarchaeologist

As a young nerd obsessed with RPGs and William Gibson’s work I was outraged at the idea of putting fantasy into cyberpunk. But then I picked up a damaged copy of the Shadowrun rules from a bargain bin and was blown away by the worldbuilding, they really found a way to make it all fit thematically and logically and I ended up running the game for years.

I know that some climate advocates will disagree with me, call me a hypocrite because of my own carbon footprint (which I fully offset with legitimate carbon credits)

Fuck right off.

I mean, you took the time to write this post. But if a 2 hour diversion is all you want from cinema then that explains why you didn’t get it.

It’s not for you, as you’ve said yourself you didn’t get what it was doing. That’s not a criticism of you, it’s just not a style that you connect with. That’s fine, but maybe try and open your mind a bit and try to understand why a lot of people think its good.

What a work of art that game is.

MIDI controller keyboards are very cheap and cover all of that.

Like, I understand that there’s a bit more involved with setting up and using software than just having a standalone unit. But if cost is your limiting factor, you don’t really have much of an alternative. Software is vastly cheaper than any hardware options, and gives you essentially an entire studio worth of gear rather than a single specific piece of kit that only does its thing.

For example, will you want to use percussion? That’s a whole separate, expensive, piece of hardware. Or, you get a solid option for free with any DAW and can purchase plugins with a huge range of sound and functionality for a fraction of the cost of the hardware.

It’s not as complex as it looks, to just use the basic sequencing and synths. There’s a million beginner tutorials online, you can be up and running making music with it in a couple of hours working through a guide.

Software is definitely the cheapest option, Ableton or Bitwig have cheap versions that are fine for getting started with. Then keep an eye out for sales on software synths and plugins, you get big sales at least once a year for most of the major ones.

DC and Marvel own all the rights to all of their characters, it was the primary motivation behind the exodus of superstar talent from those companies to form Image comics in the early 90s, where creators owned the rights to their characters.

I don’t think Moore has any say in it.

The standard payment to an artist on Spotify is “$0.003 to $0.005 per stream”: https://simplebeen.com/artists-make-on-spotify/

That is basically nothing for any artist that isn’t in the top tier of mainstream success.

prior to Spotify coming along the industry was in decline as downloading MP3’s on torrents and file sharing programs was the norm

You’re essentially pirating music by using Spotify, you are not paying the artists that you listen to in any meaningful way.

I’m still getting a ridiculous amount of value from Spotify

If only the same could be said for the artists you’re listening to…

That seems extremely high, can you explain your listening habits? Are you listening to all of those albums start to finish? Are you selecting each of those albums or just letting the algorithm run wild?

Solium Infernum: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1893810/Solium_Infernum/

Brilliantly original strategy game where you play demon lords fighting for rule of hell. Amazing, complex strategy where you need to use insults, threats, challenges and diplomacy just as much as military and magical power to win. Incredible art and writing and incredibly fun and deep gameplay. Warning: you may ruin friendships over this game, you can really do devastating stuff to each other once player abilities ramp up in the later game.

That’s the best info I’ve found on this, thanks heaps for your help.

Great, thanks!